To All Film Critics Who Called “Half Blood Prince” The Best Potter Adaptation yet…

…what the hell were you smoking?

Or who the hell paid you off?

You folks were joking, right?

Or is your Bar of Expectations for the Potter films that low?

Yeah. It has to be that last.

To the good: the actors were dead-on; it’s been a pleasure watching Dan Radcliffe and Emma Watson mature as actors, Luna Lovegood was a joy, etc etc. I was especially impressed with Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy), who nailed the part (and that subplot was the best-handled part of the film), and Alan Rickman. And the actor doing the child Tom Riddle — chilling!

And there-in lies the problem. Draco’s plot was relegated to a subplot. The whole main second plot of the book, Harry trying to find out what Draco was up to and trying to convince everyone what was happening, was slammed down into mere sub-plot status.

So what WAS the main plot? Ron & Hermione’s relationship. Or lack thereof.

At least, as far as I could tell. The movie was so disjointed and scattered that if I hadn’t read the books, I would’ve been lost, completely. Because of that, the movie made no sense and had no internal coherence or logic. There was no narrative flow, nothing tying any of the scenes together. It was a disjointed collection of scenes from the book, with extra non-book scenes thrown in — why the HELL create scenes when you can’t even manage to tell the story of the book coherently with the scenes you GOT???

“Half-Blood” was bloated to over two hours, and couldn’t manage a coherent script — hell, it couldn’t even manage to convey the fury and excitement and danger of the Death Eaters invading Hogwarts. That final, exciting, tense scene in the book just flat-out bored me in the movie. The way the movie plays it, you wonder why Draco even bothered letting them in; they’re there, they stroll through the school unchallenged, and they leave totally unchallenged — well, save for Harry somehow ending up outside the castle on their tails and chasing them through the woods all by himself (which makes no frakkin’ sense, the way the movie plays it). And the dramatic confrontation with Harry & Snape…er, well, in the book it’s tense, dramatic and had OH-MY-GOD impact…the movie, it’s a bloody afterthought, and not a very convincing one at that.

I was BORED. And that’s the film’s biggest crime.