Movie Review - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
by Rhete
SNAPE
KILLS
DUMBLEDORE.
By the way, this review will contain spoilers. But if you didn't know the above already, then hi, welcome to the internet. Mind your step. After watching this movie, the sixth entry in the Harry Potter series, I learned that "Snape kills Dumbledore" isn't actually a spoiler. It's the entire plot of the movie. It's the cliff-notes version of the book. It's the only thing of any significance that happens the entire film. And the movie is somehow two and a half excruciating boring hours long. People who ran around shouting "Snape kills Dumbledore!" the day the book came out weren't trying to ruin the book for people, they were trying to save people from reading 600 pages of nothing happening.
Anyways, let's start at the beginning to see where everything went wrong. The movie actually opens with a pretty cool scene, three witches attack London for no reason at all and wrecking havoc. Neat. This is the only cool scene in the movie so feel free to walk out after it and not think you're going to miss anything in the remaining 2 hours and 27 minutes because you won't.
Now while there is nothing really wrong with this scene, it is wrong to base half the trailer on it. The tagline is "This year evil will pass through from their world into our own", which is extremely misleading as the only stuff that takes place in modern settings are the first 5 minutes of the movie. Any premise of "hey this looks good" or "this looks like a movie with a decent amount of action" is completely false and the producers of the movie should be sued for false advertising.
Ok so after the witches scene, we then see Harry Potter hanging out in a diner, reading a newspaper that happens to have him on the cover, being labeled as a hero. Ok so I guess he did something big in the previous movie to be heralded as such, but of course this is never expanded on what-so-ever the rest of the film, as these films are clearly not designed to be watchable by people just jumping into the series and would never spend a minute or two giving a summary of important stuff. No, never.
Anyways just as Harry is flirting with the waitress and trying to score with her, his butt buddy Dumbledork shows up and magically whisks him away... to some random abandoned house. How fun. They walk inside and utter one of the lamest lines I've ever heard. "Wands out" I initially thought this was because they were being prepared in case of an attack, like unholstering you gun, but no, they're using their magic wands, as flashlights. Really shitty ones that can barely light the scene. I mean, come on! This is Harry "The Chosen One" Potter, and the great wizard Galdalf, they can't illuminate the room properly. Anyways they find an ex-hogwarts teacher there and convince him to come back to the school.
My description of scenes will get a lot fuzzier at this point because only the first 15 minutes or so actually had a narrative you could actually follow. Anyways around this time, it's revealed that some punk kid named Draco is on a mission to kill Dumbledorf, and if he fails, the teacher Snape will finish the job for him. Yes, you know almost right from the start of the movie that they plan to kill ol Dumby, and it manages to take them two hours to do so. During this time Draco, who is apparently completely incompetent, manages to give some girl a seizure, poison Ron, and get his ass kicked by Harry. Worst assassin ever.
So Harry returns to Hogwarts (that's the school he attends btw, don't want to alienate my readers) and reunites with his old friends, Ron and Emma Watson. And this is where the movie really starts to turn to shit, because way too much time is spent on a shitty teen romance plot that no one with half a brain could give two shits about. Ron is dating some girl, and Emma spends all her scenes giving him the stink eye and acting tsundere because he's not dating her.
The movie drudges along with the usual shit, teen romance drama, going to classes, eating dinner, going to parties, playing that stupid soccer with magic brooms sport, I mean, is this really the 6th movie in the franchise? Before this I had only seen the first Harry Potter movie, and yet I felt like I'd seen all this before. Have they really just been repeating the same day to day magic high school life for six damn movies? I thought I was watching Lucky Star with the occasional magic trick. Seriously for all the talk of this being a darker and more mature Harry Potter I was pretty let down. Protip: Just because every scene in a movie is tinted great doesn't mean it's dark, especially when half the cast is giggling over who is making out with who.
So during his classes, Harry happens to find a schoolbook with additional notes written into it, by someone named the half-blood prince. This actually happens pretty early in the movie, but it's easier for me to summarize each plotline all at once rather than drag them across the entire review, or two and a half hours, like the movie does. So this book has additional notes for brewing potions, and when Harry follows them and not the standard recipies, he makes really good potions. And that's about it. His friends eventually convince him to dispose of the book because... well... um... I'm not sure why. All it did was cause him to be good at the class by making good potions. He never actually uses any potions he makes. He gets a luck potion as a prize, and other characters use love potions on Ron, so Harry being excellent at making potions seems completely inconsequential.
Dumbledorey tells Harry he has to get to know the potions teacher (who is that guy they convinced to return to the school at the start of the movie, don't you remember him? no?) to get him to reveal some info he has about THE DARK LORD VOLDEMORT. So Harry does by being really good at the guys, going to dinner parties, getting his teacher drunk, and... wait is he trying to pry info out of this guy or seduce him? Who knows. Also, there's a giant dead spider. It's smack in the middle of this plotline for no reason in the movie, so I'm sticking it in the middle of the review. They spend several minutes talking about it too. The giant dead spider. Yep. Anyways Harry eventually learns from his teacher that Voldemort knew of a technique to detach his soul from his body, so even though he's dead (I'm presuming) he can still ressurect because of that, and they have to find where his soul is hidden.
So Harry goes to tell this info to BumbleBore, who is all screw that, I need you for something more important, and they teleport to some cave on a random coastline. Seriously what the hell. This is the other scene half the trailer is made from. They enter the cave, it's all OOOH PRETTY AND MAGICAL, they of course use their wands as flashlights, and eventually reach a small island in the cave. Dimpledore takes a plate filled with some black liquid, and tells Potter that no matter what happens, to make sure he drinks all of it. So Dumble takes a drink and 5 seconds later starts to go insane and screaming that he doesn't want to drink any more. Harry is forced to pour the rest down his throat as Dumble is near crying from the pain this apparently causes. It's kind of fucked up, and at the same time feels like a really forced emotional moment. I have no idea why they were doing this to begin with. So after it's all over, Harry goes to get some water and OH FUCK A ZOMBIE GRABS HIS ARM. This pointless horror movie-esq shock moment probably was designed to wake the audience up, because only now is when stuff finally starts happening in the movie. Keep in mind that it's also almost over.
So hundreds of zombies swarm them from all sides and close in, but good ol Dimpledwarf simply casts Lord of Vermillion on their asses and vaporizes everything. Finally some cool magic! Oh wait it was over in 6 seconds. So they teleport back to Hogwarts, but Harry is told to hide, and Draco, Snape, and some goons confront Dangledorf. After Draco starts crying like a pussy, Snape is finally like oh for gods sake enough of this shit, and kills Tumbledore. In one shot. He does one of those lame wand blasts, and you see Dumbo fall off the tower for about half a second. Seriously what the fucking hell, SNAPE KILLS DUMBLEDORE is like 2 seconds long. What a fucking copout! And was it me, or did snape actually say "Abra Kadabra" when he did it?
So finally after taking out the strongest wizard at Hogwarts, what do the villains do? They leave. They walk right out the front door. One of the goon girls (who looks an 80s goth band reject, I guess Twilight had no spots left for her) smashes some windows and jumps up on the table in the dining room. Not a single person tries to stop them. Aren't there supposed to be like, hundreds of students here? We all saw them in the dining room, at sporting events, etc throughout the entire movie, and now suddenly there is not A SINGLE PERSON in sight as the five villains walk right out the front door.
When outside though, Harry finally confronts them, screaming at Snape to fight him. Finally, something is going to happen! A dramatic moment! Harry is fucking pissed!
Snape knocks over Harry in 1 hit, and walks away.
WHAT THE FUCK. THESE ARE THE WORST FUCKING WIZARDS I'VE EVER SEEN. THERE IS BARELY ANY MAGIC IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE, AND THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE THE DECENCY TO HAVE A SINGLE DECENT FIGHT IN IT. It's like six movies in and Harry is still an amateur who can only do two things, use his wand as a fucking flashlight, and shoot little light beams from it that mildly injure people. Oh wait he is, because that's all he does the entire movie. I guess he's doing better than Ron and Emma who do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. It's like if in Star Wars, the only force power Luke used the entire series was a pussy version of the force push that only moved someone back a few inches.
As he leaves though, Snape mentions one last thing to Harry. That he is the half-blood prince. Umm, ok? So you wrote a bunch of notes in a book. Why is this important again? Is this supposed to be some big reveal? Who the fuck knows.
And then the movie ends. I actually got Golden Compass douche chills here, as the three main characters stand around against a sunset background talking about all the cool stuff they're going to do in the next movie. "NO!", I shouted out in my head, "YOU'VE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME, HOW IS IT OVER? NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENED!" And then it ended. Two and a half hours completely wasted.
To say this movie is bad is an understatement that is far too nice to it. To say this is the worst movie I've ever seen in my entire life would be more accurate. At two and a half hours you would expect a bit more to happen. I mean, that's a long time! It's one minute longer than The Dark Knight. I couldn't sum up that movie in three word. Well you could but "Completely fucking awesome" doesn't say anything about the plot. Harry Potter manages to even be a few minutes longer than Transformers Revenge of the Fallen, which had so much shit blowing up that after shit blowing up for literally a solid hour you actually got bored of how much shit was blowing up. Which is pretty much the complete opposite of this movie, where I was just begging for one decent scene at the end, some form of payoff, and I never got it. I really can't understand to who this movie appeals and why reviewers are praising it like it has any merit whatsoever. The audience I saw it with was a bunch of young girls giggling at every single completely not funny joke and swooning over the melodrama between Ron and Emma. This movie takes Harry Potter in a darker and serious direction my fucking ass. Just because they killed one character, a Gandalf ripoff with a stupid fucking name? Who gives two shits about him! And at least Gandalf had the decency to die in his first movie.
I didn't even pay for this movie and afterwards I demanded my money back, because time is money, and all this movie did was suck it up.
By the way, this review will contain spoilers. But if you didn't know the above already, then hi, welcome to the internet. Mind your step. After watching this movie, the sixth entry in the Harry Potter series, I learned that "Snape kills Dumbledore" isn't actually a spoiler. It's the entire plot of the movie. It's the cliff-notes version of the book. It's the only thing of any significance that happens the entire film. And the movie is somehow two and a half excruciating boring hours long. People who ran around shouting "Snape kills Dumbledore!" the day the book came out weren't trying to ruin the book for people, they were trying to save people from reading 600 pages of nothing happening.
Now while there is nothing really wrong with this scene, it is wrong to base half the 
Anyways just as Harry is flirting with the waitress and trying to score with her, his butt buddy Dumbledork shows up and magically whisks him away... to some random abandoned house. How fun. They walk inside and utter one of the lamest lines I've ever heard. "Wands out" I initially thought this was because they were being prepared in case of an attack, like unholstering you gun, but no, they're using their magic wands, as flashlights. Really shitty ones that can barely light the scene. I mean, come on! This is Harry "The Chosen One" Potter, and the great wizard Galdalf, they can't illuminate the room properly. Anyways they find an ex-hogwarts teacher there and convince him to come back to the school.
My description of scenes will get a lot fuzzier at this point because only the first 15 minutes or so actually had a narrative you could actually follow. Anyways around this time, it's revealed that some punk kid named Draco is on a mission to kill Dumbledorf, and if he fails, the teacher Snape will finish the job for him. Yes, you know almost right from the start of the movie that they plan to kill ol Dumby, and it manages to take them two hours to do so. During this time Draco, who is apparently completely incompetent, manages to give some girl a seizure, poison Ron, and get his ass kicked by Harry. Worst assassin ever.
The movie drudges along with the usual shit, teen romance drama, going to classes, eating dinner, going to parties, playing that stupid soccer with magic brooms sport, I mean, is this really the 6th movie in the franchise? Before this I had only seen the first Harry Potter movie, and yet I felt like I'd seen all this before. Have they really just been repeating the same day to day magic high school life for six damn movies? I thought I was watching Lucky Star with the occasional magic trick. Seriously for all the talk of this being a darker and more mature Harry Potter I was pretty let down. Protip: Just because every scene in a movie is tinted great doesn't mean it's dark, especially when half the cast is giggling over who is making out with who.
So during his classes, Harry happens to find a schoolbook with additional notes written into it, by someone named the half-blood prince. This actually happens pretty early in the movie, but it's easier for me to summarize each plotline all at once rather than drag them across the entire review, or two and a half hours, like the movie does. So this book has additional notes for brewing potions, and when Harry follows them and not the standard recipies, he makes really good potions. And that's about it. His friends eventually convince him to dispose of the book because... well... um... I'm not sure why. All it did was cause him to be good at the class by making good potions. He never actually uses any potions he makes. He gets a luck potion as a prize, and other characters use love potions on Ron, so Harry being excellent at making potions seems completely inconsequential.
Dumbledorey tells Harry he has to get to know the potions teacher (who is that guy they convinced to return to the school at the start of the movie, don't you remember him? no?) to get him to reveal some info he has about THE DARK LORD VOLDEMORT. So Harry does by being really good at the guys, going to dinner parties, getting his teacher drunk, and... wait is he trying to pry info out of this guy or seduce him? Who knows. Also, there's a giant dead spider. It's smack in the middle of this plotline for no reason in the movie, so I'm sticking it in the middle of the review. They spend several minutes talking about it too. The giant dead spider. Yep. Anyways Harry eventually learns from his teacher that Voldemort knew of a technique to detach his soul from his body, so even though he's dead (I'm presuming) he can still ressurect because of that, and they have to find where his soul is hidden.
So Harry goes to tell this info to BumbleBore, who is all screw that, I need you for something more important, and they teleport to some cave on a random coastline. Seriously what the hell. This is the other scene half the trailer is made from. They enter the cave, it's all OOOH PRETTY AND MAGICAL, they of course use their wands as flashlights, and eventually reach a small island in the cave. Dimpledore takes a plate filled with some black liquid, and tells Potter that no matter what happens, to make sure he drinks all of it. So Dumble takes a drink and 5 seconds later starts to go insane and screaming that he doesn't want to drink any more. Harry is forced to pour the rest down his throat as Dumble is near crying from the pain this apparently causes. It's kind of fucked up, and at the same time feels like a really forced emotional moment. I have no idea why they were doing this to begin with. So after it's all over, Harry goes to get some water and OH FUCK A ZOMBIE GRABS HIS ARM. This pointless horror movie-esq shock moment probably was designed to wake the audience up, because only now is when stuff finally starts happening in the movie. Keep in mind that it's also almost over.
So hundreds of zombies swarm them from all sides and close in, but good ol Dimpledwarf simply casts Lord of Vermillion on their asses and vaporizes everything. Finally some cool magic! Oh wait it was over in 6 seconds. So they teleport back to Hogwarts, but Harry is told to hide, and Draco, Snape, and some goons confront Dangledorf. After Draco starts crying like a pussy, Snape is finally like oh for gods sake enough of this shit, and kills Tumbledore. In one shot. He does one of those lame wand blasts, and you see Dumbo fall off the tower for about half a second. Seriously what the fucking hell, SNAPE KILLS DUMBLEDORE is like 2 seconds long. What a fucking copout! And was it me, or did snape actually say "Abra Kadabra" when he did it?
So finally after taking out the strongest wizard at Hogwarts, what do the villains do? They leave. They walk right out the front door. One of the goon girls (who looks an 80s goth band reject, I guess Twilight had no spots left for her) smashes some windows and jumps up on the table in the dining room. Not a single person tries to stop them. Aren't there supposed to be like, hundreds of students here? We all saw them in the dining room, at sporting events, etc throughout the entire movie, and now suddenly there is not A SINGLE PERSON in sight as the five villains walk right out the front door.
WHAT THE FUCK. THESE ARE THE WORST FUCKING WIZARDS I'VE EVER SEEN. THERE IS BARELY ANY MAGIC IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE, AND THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE THE DECENCY TO HAVE A SINGLE DECENT FIGHT IN IT. It's like six movies in and Harry is still an amateur who can only do two things, use his wand as a fucking flashlight, and shoot little light beams from it that mildly injure people. Oh wait he is, because that's all he does the entire movie. I guess he's doing better than Ron and Emma who do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. It's like if in Star Wars, the only force power Luke used the entire series was a pussy version of the force push that only moved someone back a few inches.
To say this movie is bad is an understatement that is far too nice to it. To say this is the worst movie I've ever seen in my entire life would be more accurate. At two and a half hours you would expect a bit more to happen. I mean, that's a long time! It's one minute longer than The Dark Knight. I couldn't sum up that movie in three word. Well you could but "Completely fucking awesome" doesn't say anything about the plot. Harry Potter manages to even be a few minutes longer than Transformers Revenge of the Fallen, which had so much shit blowing up that after shit blowing up for literally a solid hour you actually got bored of how much shit was blowing up. Which is pretty much the complete opposite of this movie, where I was just begging for one decent scene at the end, some form of payoff, and I never got it. I really can't understand to who this movie appeals and why reviewers are praising it like it has any merit whatsoever. The audience I saw it with was a bunch of young girls giggling at every single completely not funny joke and swooning over the melodrama between Ron and Emma. This movie takes Harry Potter in a darker and serious direction my fucking ass. Just because they killed one character, a Gandalf ripoff with a stupid fucking name? Who gives two shits about him! And at least Gandalf had the decency to die in his first movie.