Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
When will this neverending story end?
dir: David Yates
2009
Another year, another Potter flick. The difference is, now, after having enjoyed Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix so much, I thought I actually cared about future Potter flicks.
And then the Half-Blood Prince came along, and reminded me why I never really liked these tales of magical whimsy and whimsical magic in the first place.
That’s a bit harsh. Initially, going into it, I was pretty excited. I also thought, and still think, that this entry looks phenomenal as well. Hogwarts never looked so vast, so foreboding, so much more like a place that is no longer a sanctuary to these budding sorcerers.
Of course the ‘kids’ are getting older. Harry, Ron and Hermione are becoming awfully, um, grown-up physically, at least, if not emotionally mature. The story reflects and spends an inordinate amount of time fixating and developing these developments, as if the fact that they’re all acting like horny teenagers is supposed to be some kind of revelation.
Of course, this being a very successful franchise, they’re not going to turn it into an episode of the frightening school-age British series Skins, which has kids shagging, doing drugs and carrying on like teenagers having been acting since the dawn of cask wine.
Needless to say, no decent person expects to see that kind of stuff happening within the hallowed walls of Hogwarts. But they’re perfectly entitled to expect to see it in the inevitable porno versions that tend to ensue.
