Harry Potter and the Half-Bored Audience
URGA MOTW
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
It's been a long time coming - the sixth Harry Potter movie was supposed to come out last November but the studio decided they didn't want to compete against the James Bond movie "Quantum of Solace" and also that a US Summer Release would probably net them more money, and the gap between movies 6 & 7 would be less this way.
So HP6 is finally out and er... yeah, that's about it. It's been a while since I finished reading the series, and so a lot of this movie was spent trying to identify what the side-line characters' names were because it was quite often not made clear in dialogue (Lavender Brown, Cormac McLaggin, and even Luna Lovegood all appeared and their names were hardly even mentioned by the main characters...)
I wouldn't say this movie is bad, it's certainly not. Once again, the writers have done an admirable job of turning a long and boring book into a long and boring movie..., but still one that's better than the book, at least a little. The movie misses a lot of subplots, and jumps from major event to major event so much that it becomes more of an "And then... and then..." tale rather than a cohesive narrative. But considering the source material, it's still pretty admirable. The HP5 movie was infinitely more watchable than the book was readable, but for this movie I'd say that movie and book are on par. There was so little emotional push, except at the climax where SPOILER dies (yeah, you probably know who already) but even then it wasn't nearly emotional enough to make me choke up. Maybe I guess it's because I don't really care about any of the characters...
One thing the filmmakers did do well was the comedy - this time purely based around adolescent romance - and some of Luna Lovegood's nonsensical lines were quite amusing. Although they did get the whimsical comedy of the romantic relationships right, there was very little serious emotional punch when dealing with this, but then again, it's unlikely I would have cared much, not really caring about the characters.
So one book and two movies left to go. Let's hope they're good movies, or at least passable. But I reckon we should pay more attention to better children's fantasy films. Bring on Neil Gaiman's Coraline, which opens next week FINALLY[1], I think :)
6/10 Meh
[1] Coraline was released in the US in February. In fact, the DVD/BD is actually already out in the US, and the movie still hasn't hit cinemas here. Hello movie studios, why do you think people pirate stuff?
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
It's been a long time coming - the sixth Harry Potter movie was supposed to come out last November but the studio decided they didn't want to compete against the James Bond movie "Quantum of Solace" and also that a US Summer Release would probably net them more money, and the gap between movies 6 & 7 would be less this way.
So HP6 is finally out and er... yeah, that's about it. It's been a while since I finished reading the series, and so a lot of this movie was spent trying to identify what the side-line characters' names were because it was quite often not made clear in dialogue (Lavender Brown, Cormac McLaggin, and even Luna Lovegood all appeared and their names were hardly even mentioned by the main characters...)
I wouldn't say this movie is bad, it's certainly not. Once again, the writers have done an admirable job of turning a long and boring book into a long and boring movie..., but still one that's better than the book, at least a little. The movie misses a lot of subplots, and jumps from major event to major event so much that it becomes more of an "And then... and then..." tale rather than a cohesive narrative. But considering the source material, it's still pretty admirable. The HP5 movie was infinitely more watchable than the book was readable, but for this movie I'd say that movie and book are on par. There was so little emotional push, except at the climax where SPOILER dies (yeah, you probably know who already) but even then it wasn't nearly emotional enough to make me choke up. Maybe I guess it's because I don't really care about any of the characters...
One thing the filmmakers did do well was the comedy - this time purely based around adolescent romance - and some of Luna Lovegood's nonsensical lines were quite amusing. Although they did get the whimsical comedy of the romantic relationships right, there was very little serious emotional punch when dealing with this, but then again, it's unlikely I would have cared much, not really caring about the characters.
So one book and two movies left to go. Let's hope they're good movies, or at least passable. But I reckon we should pay more attention to better children's fantasy films. Bring on Neil Gaiman's Coraline, which opens next week FINALLY[1], I think :)
6/10 Meh
[1] Coraline was released in the US in February. In fact, the DVD/BD is actually already out in the US, and the movie still hasn't hit cinemas here. Hello movie studios, why do you think people pirate stuff?