Movie Review - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

After Southern Man's recent rant about midnight movies, it is with delight that he reports that the local 24-plex ran Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on all twenty-four screens last night at midnight proper. Or this morning; the start times were staggered to 12:15 and 12:30 to accomodate the crowd, the likes of which Southern Man had never seen at that particular theatre. In fact Southern Man actually missed most of the previews while standing in the lenghy concession lines. Southern Man's teen daughter (and her friends) have had their tickets for the better part of a month and spent much of that time working on their costumes; Southern Man and Wife merely attended and basked in the general Harry Potter insanity, which is what makes midnight movies such fun.

The problem with movies based on popular books is that everyone knows how they end (unlike, say, 1980, when many of us had no idea that Darth Vader was Luke's father), so no one is surprise when...well, if you've read the book, you know, and if you haven't, Southern Man isn't going to spoil it for you. And the problem with movies based on the next-to-last-of-the-septalogy book is that they expend a lot of effort setting up the yet-to-come grand finale and thus often have rather incomplete plotlines of their own. The film gracefully handles these issues while delivering a version of the book that is both restrained and exciting, with more focus on character than on special effects, and achieving a good balance between dark suspense and lighthearted good humor. And more than anything, this film really, really has us champing at the bit for the final entry (or entries, as it looks like Deathly Hallows will be released in two chunks) of this remarkable series.