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Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Bellatrix Lestrange. Narcissa Malfoy. Romilda Vane. Jo Rowling certainly has a knack for names (including her own pseudonym – the “K” is pure affectation).

Persecuted by such alarmingly exotic creatures, it’s no wonder the scrupulously mundane Harry Potter keeps his nose in his books and leaves the lovey-dovey stuff to his best friend Ron. Weasley even swipes the chocolates drenched with a love drug meant for Harry.

One book, in particular, commands Potter’s attention during his sixth year at Hogwart’s: a battered old textbook he inherits in Professor Horace Slughorn’s potion class, brilliantly annotated by a mysterious old pupil, “the half-blood prince”. How can Potter trust the integrity of such an enigmatic pen name? A true book-worm, Hermione is sufficiently intrigued that she looks him up in the library – the school is still a Google-free zone – but she comes up blank.

Meanwhile Dumbledore is urging Harry to get to know Slughorn better – intimate soirees and all. His repressed memories of teaching the young Voldemort – then known as Tom Riddle – could hold the key to the encroaching showdown between the forces of darkness, and the light.

Pointless to complain that Rowling has teased out this story so cautiously that for every three steps forward we always seem to move two steps back. The movies have always rewarded Rowling’s devoted readers with their fidelity to the source, leaving the hold-outs to go hang.

With only (only!) two more films to go before the charm’s wound up, the notion of watching the entire series back-to-back presents itself, a marathon prospect that would be both exhausting and exhilarating.

Exhausting, because Rowling repeatedly falls back on the same measly narrative tropes (which shady member of staff will Harry investigate this time?) and because there are only so many computer-generated magic tricks anyone can take.

Exhilarating, because the chance to watch half a dozen kids grow up before our eyes – eight years telescoped into fifteen hours or so – is itself quite magical. And because, whatever you make of the slouching story arc, the films routinely supply exciting set-pieces, marvelously idiosyncratic British character acting, and no shortage of spectacle (and I don’t mean Harry’s signature eye-glasses either).

Directed - like The Order of The Phoenix – by the deftly self-effacing David Yates, The Half-Blood Prince is very much up to par, and perhaps a little better than that.

Ron’s surging hormones (and Hermione’s matching embarrassment) ensure plenty of chuckles, while the estimable Jim Broadbent steps up as this episode’s de facto guest star. His Professor Slughorn turns out to be a surprisingly sympathetic reading of a foolishly solipsistic scholar with a soft spot for his star pupils. (First spotted in the guise of an armchair, he keeps one foot planted firmly in the closet.)

As for Daniel Radcliffe, he’s grown immeasurably as an actor, underplaying neatly and sprinkling light comic notes where the opportunity presents itself. If we don’t care so very deeply for the character, even after all these years, that’s not Radcliffe’s fault. Harry’s courage is beyond question, but he’s a little on the slow side. He still hasn’t figured out where Severus Snape stands in the grand scheme of things… Tune in next November for The Deathly Hallows, Part I.

Tom Charity
tom.charity@lovefilm.com

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