Review's Resort: Talkie Tuesday: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

"Why is it, when something happens, it is ALWAYS you three?"

Hello everyone!

With December just around the corner (literally!) I figured it was time to do the last sort of regular movie review before I dive off the deep end and start on my Christmas movies.

Yes, like I've done for the past two years or so, I'll be devoting December reviews entirely to the Christmas theme, so after tonight, the final two movie reviews of the saga will have to wait until after New Year's and for us to return in January.

I know, I know, I had that break in October as well, why couldn't I have planned this better?

I should have. But my math failed me and I didn't really calculate how many weeks there are left in the year, so there you have it.

I plan on getting the entire movie saga on here though, so don't worry.

It may just take a little bit more time.

But, as a last huzzah before being merry and bright, let's take a look at Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

As you know, links to all the previous blog posts (and with this the movies that came with them) can be found at the bottom of this page. Our wizard, Harry Potter, has now been attending Hogwarts school for six years, he has one more to go before he graduates and becomes an adult and can FINALLY move out from the silly Dursley's, but he's got problems.

Namely, we all remember that two years ago, Voldemort came back, and now the Ministry of Magic can't deny that fact anymore because they've all seen him during the Battle of the Department of Mysteries (see: Order of the Phoenix).

So everyone knows what time it is now: buckle up and hold tight, because it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Disclaimer: I'd like to make a note here that, out of all the books and movies, Half-Blood Prince is the one I know the least. It's my least favourite of the lot and I've never rewatched it as many times as the others, so I'm relying heavily on other sources to make sure this review is the way it should be.

After the disaster with the Dementors in the last movie, the Dursleys are nowhere to be seen in this one as Harry is in an Underground cafe reading a newspaper and attempting to flirt with a waitress when Dumbledore makes an appearance and he has to cancel all his previously-laid plans about meeting up with said waitress because the Headmaster needs him along.

Dumbledore does apologise, and then the two of them Apparate together (Dumbledore even congratulates Harry how well he did) to an unknown location where the Headmaster recruits one retired professor, Horace Slughorn, to return to his job at Hogwarts as Potions Professor.

Where's Snape, you might ask? Well, he finally got the DADA position, believe it or not.

Anyway, Dumbledore explains to Harry that Slughorn is a collector of sorts, he collects skilled young wizards, and that he took Harry along with him as a persuasion tactic. He then deposits Harry outside the Burrow in the middle of the marshland and lets him traipse over to the Weasleys on his own, who not only weren't expecting him but have no clue how he even arrived.

Old men tricks, people.

At this point we're aware of a budding romance between Harry and Ginny Weasley, but there are also more pressing matters, aka while in Diagon Alley, our infamous trio spy Draco heading into dark places, and they're suspicious of a cabinet everyone seems interested in (but nobody guesses the actual use of until it's too late). What IS Draco doing, anyway?

Well, Draco has sort of gotten himself chosen by Voldemort to kill Dumbledore (because old Voldy is a coward who likes to assign his dirty work to other people), and his mother Narcissa has wrung an Unbreakable Vow out of Severus Snape, that he will do the deed should the boy fail.

Alright then.

Time to go back to Hogwarts.

Of course Harry ends up in trouble when he goes to spy on Draco in his Invisibility Cloak but Draco figures him out, and leaves him there, stupefied. Thankfully, Luna Lovegood sees things even when they aren't there, so she helps him out and they go off to Hogwarts together, past the checkpoint set up by the staff because of these uncertain times.

Here the movie diverges into different subplots:

We have the romance one with Ginny, including but not limited to Harry and Hermione also helping Ron get on the Gryffindor Quidditch team;

we have the task Dumbledore gives Harry of extracting a memory from Slughorn that Dumbledore knows is fake, and now he wants the real thing;

we have Slughorn's infamous parties;

we have Draco being way, WAY out of his depth with this whole kill Dumbledore thing;

and finally we have the hunt for the Horcruxes, which Dumbledore asks Harry's help with, naturally.

You may notice that I left two plots out of the list, because I'm about to go into them right now: Ron and Hermione (yeah, we ALL knew this was coming), and the Half-Blood Prince, whose Potions book ends up with Harry and makes Harry a sudden master of the art, even though he's never been THAT good at potion-making to begin with. He now is, and wins a little bit of Liquid Luck, which will come in handy later.

While he and Hermione help Ron to become keeper of the Quidditch team, this kind of backfires when Ron starts a relationship with Lavender, a fellow student, which upsets Hermione, and everyone around the globe is like: WHY Ron? WHY?

He's wondering the same thing, even as McGonagall is wondering what possessed her to accept our trio to Hogwarts in the first place because anything bad that's ever happened has involved them somehow.

We feel you, professor, we really do.

During Christmas break, Harry is invited to the Weasleys, where nobody takes his suspicion that Draco is now a Death Eater seriously, but Arthur does guess about the cabinet the trio saw back at Diagon Alley, thinking it might be a Vanishing Cabinet. What's that, you ask? Well, when you put something into the cabinet, it vanishes, only to appear in the sister-cabinet, wherever that one may be.

Somehow, nobody figures out the significance of this even then, but to their credit they're a bit busy when Bellatrix Lestrange attacks the Burrow and draws Harry into battle, forcing him to fight before the Order arrives to fight off the Death Eaters. They're successful, but unfortunately the Burrow is put to the torch, and that's one of the saddest sights I've ever seen. EVER.

Back at Hogwarts, a startling chain of events continues in which there are students dropping ill left, right and center after attempting - and failing - to deliver gifts to Dumbledore. This comes to the fore when Ron accidentally imbibes a love potion meant for Harry (in what is probably my favourite and most hilarious scene of the entire movie) and Harry takes him to Slughorn for help. There, they try to celebrate with a bottle of Mead Slughorn was to give Dumbledore, only for Ron to end up poisoned, and Harry having to rescue him yet again.

So someone is DESPERATE for Dumbledore to die. Who could that be?

That's a question that doesn't need answering, but our characters have no clue, so life goes on much as before, only by this point Harry has managed to extract the memory Dumbledore's been after all year (with some help from Liquid Luck), and together the two of them finally find out what it was: during Voldemort's time at Hogwarts, he asked Slughorn about how to split his soul into pieces to then live forever.

Sounds familiar?

Dumbledore divines that this is exactly what happened, and that Voldemort has hidden his Horcruxes all around, though two of them have by now been destroyed: the diary from Chamber of Secrets, and the Riddle family ring which Dumbledore himself destroyed, at the cost of his own life because he now has a curse sitting happily in one of his hands, just waiting to devour him.

Anyway, Harry and he travel to a seaside cavern to get another one of these things, and Harry helps Dumbledore drink a potion that covers it, significantly weakening the old man which plays into the next sequence of events.

Remember that cabinet?

Well, the sister-cabinet is inside the Room of Requirement in Hogwarts.

And you don't need to Apparate to get to your destination (something that's impossible on school grounds unless you're the Headmaster).

After Dumbledore and Harry's arrival, Dumbledore tells Harry to hide and confronts Draco, Bellatrix and the rest of the Death Eaters who've come with them; Harry is desperate to help, but is intercepted by Snape, who motions for the boy to be quiet and goes up to help himself.

Only, his version of help is to murder Albus Dumbledore.

That's right.

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore is dead.

Furious, Harry confronts Snape, who Dumblefore ordered him to talk to, but Snape obviously overpowers Harry and reveals that HE is the Half-Blood Prince, not Draco or Voldemort or anyone else, and then takes off with the other Death Eaters to the sound of hearts shattering around the world.

Why, Snape? WHY???

Meanwhile, Dumbledore's body has been found and the Dark Lord's Mark pasted over Hogwarts, one which McGonagall leads the rest of the school in dispersing by lifting their wands and shining light up into the darkness.

After the Headmaster's funeral, Harry talks to Ron and Hermione to tell them about the Horcruxes, and that the locket he and Dumbledore acquired is fake. Inside was a note from someone named R.A.B., saying HE has the locket and will destroy it, but at the moment Harry has no idea who this is or where the real locket is. He does know he needs to hunt down the other Horcruxes, however, and his two friends accept his mission, saying they'll head off together.

And with that, the darkest chapter of the Second Wizarding War begins.

Unlike the rest of the movies, this one might hold less appeal to me precisely because of Dumbledore's death, or maybe because I'm really not that interested in the Half-Blood Prince storyline, though who knows? It IS, however, good, as far as movies go, even if it has a weird sort of gradient over it that makes all the colours seem almost sepia-muted, or maybe it's just me.

In any event, things are now in motion, and Voldemort has thrown down the gauntlet for Harry to pick up: it'll soon be time to face him in actual battle.