The Haute Critique

I’ve seen all the Harry Potter movies, but I am decidedly a muggle. In fact, if you are not a muggle, you have already seen this movie and discussed it ad nauseam with fellow wizards. I don’t mean that pejoratively. My wife, Mrs. Gravity, is pure magic. It was with her and a few other magic folk that I went to the matinee showing of Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince.

Six posters lose the plot

For a weekday showing, it was well attended. Once the strains of the familiar score started dancing in the dark, the theater was ready, more like longing, to be entranced. The familiar feeling doesn’t stop with the score. We begin with cryptic warnings of danger and doom from Professor Dumbledore. Harry, feeling cryptic warning fatigue, goes along with Dumbledore compliantly, and without a great deal of concern. And, so does the audience. Yes, there will be danger and the fate of the world will be decided in the balance. We understand all that, now let’s get on with the movie, shall we?

It is a great first pitch. Movie after movie we start with a similar setup. We are older and wiser. So is Harry. This matched emotion between viewer and Harry, however, is quickly betrayed. In the first real scene of magic (Other than warping around Britain and turning a wand into a flashlight), Dumbledore goes Mary Poppins and cleans up someone’s house. Harry is *stunned*. Speechlessly he dodges plates returning to the cupboard. His jaw drops as light bulbs change themselves. Surely not! This can’t be possible!?! What happened to that world weary teenager that was a scarf and some eye-liner away from writing some brutally insipid emo poetry? Suddenly he is acting like Belle from Beauty and the Beast. This kid has fought demons. He has seen death. He owns a flippin’ invisibility cloak, but somehow an automatic garage door opener suddenly looks like the work of some unicorn woodland nymph fairy.

That rant aside, the film looks great. The slick polish and epic transitions really do build an enveloping world. And whether it is Charlie’s Angels or Iron Man, all blockbusters look a little better through the green filter. The fantasy world looks fantastic, which by some mathematical principle distributes a genuine feeling of place. The stone walls are massive and the snow, pure white.

Post production twinkle isn’t the only fairy dust on screen. There is a smorgasbord of puppy love and subdued horn-doggery. The giggling, flirting, crying and pouting are actually really well done; and so many flavors. There are more ‘love’ stories than I can enumerate. Each arc trickles through the first half of the film, like a Plinko chip on The Price is Right, it bounces playfully from peg to peg. Even when the outcome is formulaic, our inner school kid cracks a little smile. Eventually, Dumbledore sighs,”Oh, to be young and feel love’s keen sting.” (or something like that)

All of the Sadie Hawkins romance does squeeze any momentum out of the macho storyline. Remember how the fate of the world hangs in the balance? Yeah, that thing.

The straining balance totters back and forth. Once the doom and gloom really gets marching, the mushy bits are put on pause, never to be revisited. But the oscillating tone truly does damage to a crown jewel of the whole Harry Potter series. Like I said, I never read the books, but, almost everyone I know did. And when Half-Blood Prince came out, one scene was read and re-read through tear filled eyes. Not just eyes of babes, but adults who felt magic had been left behind long ago. In that moment, the Harry Potter spell was its most tangible. On the road to this revelation there are many scenes of graphic, jarring action and juiced up puppy love presented with flair and acumen. Then, when the time comes, the film simply doesn’t include the book’s climax. Oh, it happens (and if you have the faintest idea of the plot of this volume of the Harry Potter saga, you know what ‘it’ is). The team that made this picture gets to check that box. The deed is done. However, for someone that didn’t read the book, even being lit up with the spirit, primed for empathy, it seemed pedestrian. For my party of magic folk, it was simply heretical. To me, it was boring.

Before we close the book, a couple of parting shout outs. The brightest spot for me was Luna Lovegood. She pops up as if she is a shared hallucination. An ephemeral, and not completely there, sprite. A bubbly lemon-lime refreshment that pops up when the rest of the plot starts getting dry. A bit of lunatic charm that says,”Don’t worry. You’re just as sane as me.”

The other part worth mentioning is the liquid luck. It is a potion that brings success in all endeavors to whomever drinks it, until it wears off. We quickly imagine that the potion transforms the drinker into the toast of the town. The director then hints deeper that the effects include a hyper alertness and a suave macho aggression. Then a funny thing happens. We learn that the potion, in truth, gets you totally baked. That’s right. Drinking liquid luck is like pigging out at Willie Nelson’s brownie bar. And, for some viewers, it is another glimpse of the talent this director has with perfect empathy. Unfortunately, that too wears off.

As we wandered out of the multi-plex, back towards parking spot 9 3/4, the magic folk cooly dismissed the effort. For my part, while liquid luck helped some of the film succeed, it wasn’t enough to catapult it into haute cinema.

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