Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince!

Last night, VF and I joined a slew of Hogwarts bedecked youths and went to the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. We grabbed dinner at 9:00pm and went over to stand in line about an hour later. Silly, silly adults - what were we thinking? When we arrived for the line standing, the line already stretched away from the theater, down the street and around the corner. We took our places in the line and VF, demonstrating remarkable foraging skills, found an old desk chair someone put out on the street for us to take turns sitting on. Many of the people walking past looked at the pair of us with envy, and we basked a little in it. Joining us in line were many Hermiones, Harrys and Rons, as well as a Professor Snape, a Bellatrix LeStrange, a Draco Malfoy, and a TV News cameraman. While the youths in line waved at the camera with shouts of "Weasly is our King!" and "Hi Mom", VF and I hid out faces.

Apparently being at the end of the line was not the end of the world, as we were able still able to get perfectly good seats - and we did so without running through the theater, screaming about passionate love for Daniel Radcliff. We settled into our seats, I pulled out my Gryffindor scarf to keep me warm (yes, I do have one) and we waited the hour for the movie to start.

There is something magical about seeing the opening night show with the true fans. Every preview was met with screams and wild applause, including the one for G.I. Joe which looked positively wretched. The most promising preview of the night was the one for "Where The Wild Things Are" which looks very good. The most puzzling preview of the night was one for a movie based on the Sherlock Holmes mysteries - only, the movie has been made as an action/adventure flick including Holmes in a boxing match and hanging off of a cliff. Maybe my mind is a little fuzzy, but I don't remember Doyle writing any kind of scenes like that for his protagonist. Also, and maybe this is a case of my liking the series so much as a kid, I have trouble picturing Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes and Jude Law as Watson. Law is too pretty to be the affable Watson and Downey Jr. is too rough around the edges to be the meticulous and mysterious Sherlock Holmes.

After the previews, it was time for the movie to begin. Since anyone who has stood in line for hours to see this film is a true fan, the theater settled down immediately. There was little talking during the movie except for laughter in all the right places and enthusiastic cheering and clapping at the end of the movie. Truthfully, this installment of the Harry Potter saga deserves the clapping at the end.

Part of the success of this movie is that the book is much shorter. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is probably my least favorite book of the series, but this was easily my favorite movie thus far. When I read it, I commented that I thought it would be almost better as a movie than it was as a book. Because it is shorter and concentrates on one major plot point, it is easier to bundle it into two hours and forty minutes. The greatest problem with the last movie (my favorite book and I thought the worst of the movies) is that there was so much information in the book - all of it important in the end - that the filmmakers had to make a very choppy film in order to fit it all in. People who had not read the book were lost, bored and confused (at least, that is what I gathered from my sample size of three).

This movie does an excellent job balancing the interpersonal relationships between the main characters and the developing love stories between them and the darkness of the rise of Voldemort. The actors playing Harry, Ron and Hermione have all grown up and become far better actors. I thought Daniel Radcliff was particularly good this time around - he has been honing his acting chops on the London theater scene, so that is not particularly surprising. The girl who plays Lavender Brown hits just the right note playing a lovesick teenage girl. Sadly sidelined in this installment were Professor McGonagall, Hagrid, the Weasley twins and Neville, but it was nice to see Tom Fenton (as Draco Malfoy) and Michael Gambon (as Dumbledore) take a more integral role. Malfoy in particular had become something of a one note character in the last two installments, so it was nice to see some depth in this movie. Jim Broadbent is another perfect casting job as Horace Slughorn.

All of the Harry Potter purists will complain about the parts of the book missing from the movie - no funeral scene, no huge magic fight in the castle, skirting around how the twins paid for their joke shop (since they left out Harry's winning from movie 4), pretty much all but one quidditch scene, some of Dumbledore's memories of Voldemort are left out, and no mentions of Dumbledore's wand (important for movie number 5). But none of those - except possibly the bits about the wand - were integral to the story of the Half Blood Prince or the two movies that will make up the end of the series.

All in all - if you are a Harry Potter fan, you shouldn't be disappointed in this movie. But if you haven't read the books, or at least seen the last four movies, you will likely be lost. David Yates is back directing the two parts that make up the last book in the series and this bodes well for a fantastic three part finale worthy of the books.

At least, in my opinion.