Ou etait Neville?

~ My review of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood ~

Rating: A solid 3 stars.

While an enjoyable and artistically excellent film, the sentiment with which I left the theatre after watching this installment of HP adventures was one of dissatisfaction. Essentially, it could have been better. It deserved to be better. And it was not. I wish it had been. But it wasn't.

Now before everyone starts accusing me of having too-high expectations (which may by the way be a completely accurate allegation), I would like to point out that I thought a lot of the film was brilliant. The acting was its at its usual standard of perfection, the art direction and production design, impressive etc. What was most gratifying was the skillful and precise way in which the humorous parts of the story were crafted and presented--- something which had been until now been being gradually pushed out of the past films. What was most disappointing however was that the careful management of timing, transition, performance, writing, editing, and directing that made the comedic moments so successful did not carry over to the handling of the dramatic moments. As I remember, the sixth book was actually quite exciting and the eb and flow of tension and emotion was relatively well-structured. Virtually, none of this carried over to the movie in my opinion. The film had all the right pieces, but it rather mucked it up in putting them together. Transition was not its strong point.

In its defense, I can't help but feeling like it might have been a issue of time for this film. As we all know, the release of the film was pushed back in order to give the producers, editors, directors, effects people etc. more time to finish the film. Unfortunately this probably was not enough time. I say this because the quality of the scenes individually is very high--- indicating that they managed to film all the right stuff, but did not have enough to fine-tune its mashup. That and the first half of the film is much better than the second half, something highly typical of a film that lacked the proper allocation of time to put on the finishing touches.

But all in all, the most disappointing thing about the film--- and I hope you don't mind me giving this away, and actually I think it is good to know this going in so you are not a gravely disappointed as I was--- is that it excised Dumbledore's funeral. The film did a bumbling job of paying its respects to the character in that his death is actually rather anticlimactic, but it could have made up for this by doing a bang-up job on his funeral.

Though I do not have the highest of opinions for JK Rowling's writing, I thought her use of the funeral as a venue for catharsis, sum-up and 'coming up next' was rather impressive. The scene while filled with excellent emotion is highly functional. Losing that scene meant the film rather dropped the ball on everything it did for the story. Instead it is replaced with a rather out-of-place Harry-Hermonie dialogue about how beautiful Hogwarts is, shame it's going to the dogs now, and it's really kind of strange that Ron is included in this scene but not given any lines and is instead reduced to just giving a supportive nod of agreement every now and then. Credits.

I sort of went along with the scene as I waited for the cut to the funeral. It never came.

The other major disappointment about this film is that our dearest dear, Neville, is essentially not in the film. He gets to play the role of the concerned onlooker, peering over McGonagall's shoulder now and again, but that is it. No lines at all. We are all coming somewhat to terms with franchise's reduction of our various favorite supporting characters to mere cameos, but this is a bit excessive. Neville is not only hugely popular and awesome, but extremely important. Let's just hope they address him properly in the last two films. We all know he really ought to have been the Chosen One, and the least the movies could do is acknowledge this.

Other notable absences: the Dursleys do not appear. I always liked opening with them and despite their magic-hating despicableness, I rather missed them.

In summary, I was dissatisfied. The film feel grossly short of the last film, and this was the first HP film I will pronounce not as good, not even on par, with the book.

Tra!

P.S. One of the best parts of the night was hearing the theatre erupt in the deranged screams of rabid Twilight-fan girls when the New Moon trailer came on. It was almost as hilarious as the shower of boos that all the boys in the theatre could not stifle once it had finished. Most amusing!