Maggie noodle review - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

The Harry Potter movies have begun to take liberties with JK Rowling's stories, not so much in the big happenings, but in the content. Fans of the book who have imagined in their minds fantastic sequences are bound to be disappointed when they see this one. In order to cram a book into a 150-minute movie (without songs, mind you!) requires comprehensive revision of events and sequences. Gone therefore are the many "memory" trips taken by Dumbledore and Harry. Instead the first and last one are kept intact and the rest not even referred to. The movie ends without a climactic battle at Hogwarts, which it does in the book.

Having said all that, this is the best Harry Potter movie so far. It was refreshing to see that the movie-makers did not deem it necessary to end the movie with a series of bangs and explosions. After all, the 7th book also ends with the Battle of Hogwarts and it would have seemed repetitive if they had already covered it in Movie 6.

The actors have been at it so long they slip effortlessly into their roles. My favorite is Alan Rickman, who makes everything he says sound ominous and full of portent. I'd love to be able to hear him place a lunch order one day just to see if the waiter trembles in his boots while taking it down.

While Ginny's "hard, blazing look" was eschewed in favor of a newly-written scene in the Room of Requirement, considering how much material needed to be covered, it was probably as nice way of doing it as a screenplay writer could think of.

I can hardly wait for the next two HP movies to come out now (yes, two movies).