HP & The HBP: The Review

I know I'm normally pretty good about avoiding all spoilers in my reviews, but this is Harry Potter. My thought process is if you really care about avoiding any type of spoiler, then you probably should have read the book by now.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
I didn't like the last HP movie, Order of the Phoenix very much. Mainly because it seemed to be more of a highlight reel of the book. There wasn't really a cohesive movie in there. Since I had read the book I knew what was happening, but I'm sure if you hadn't read the book you would have no idea what was going on.

This book took the exact opposite approach. Which means that the two only a few main plot lines and expanded them into a movie. This time if you haven't read the books you would at least be able to follow along with what was happening. But having read the books, there is SO much missing. So much vital information the will really be necessary to make sense of the 7th movie. For example, almost all of the pensive Tom Riddle scenes are gone. This is actually something I would have really liked to have seen. The parts with his mother's family, and the scenes of him starting to collect items for the horcruxes.

And the horcruxes themselves? At the end of the movie Dumbledore does tell Harry there are 7 horcruxes, but never goes into what they might be. Since this is so important to know in the 7th book, I'm not sure how they will explain this. Although they do have two movies to fill (yeah!).

One thing that bothered the boy was Snape and Harry confrontation at the end. In the book Snape seems to be trying to help him. Trying to give him advice almost. In the movie he just seemed to be evil.

Also, Dumbledore's "Please," didn't sound the way I expected it too. Although I do think the way he said it fit pretty perfectly.

And the house elves (Dobby & Krecher), weren't there. They didn't have a very part in this one, but they both have pretty big parts in the next. Hopefully they don't get cut out of the final movie(s) as well.

Despite all the criticisms I voiced above, I really did love the movie. I think it might actually be one of my favorite ones. And well, I can't wait for the next one!

Moving past the actual movie to the movie going experience. All 15 auditoriums at the theater we went to were sold out, which is how it was most places. Luckily since it was Baton Rouge we were able to buy our tickets earlier that day. They were letting people sit in whichever theater they wanted. Which means when we arrived just after 11 it was hard to find a good seat. We wound up one of the smallest theater in the 3rd row from the very front.

Then I had to amazing idea to go to the concession stand. Mainly because it was midnight, and I needed caffeine. The entire lobby was FULL of people waiting in line to buy food. After 40 minutes I finally got to the front where they told me they were out of almost all drinks. The only thing they still had left was bottle water, which was slightly warm because they couldn't keep the fridges stocked. I figured I wanted my 40 minutes of waiting to be worth something, so I bought my $5 bottle of water and candy.

Now we live around 2 minutes from this theater. But since all 15 screens let out at approximately the same time into the same small parking lot, well we didn't quite get home that quickly. Let's see, the movie ended at 2:30am, we got home around 3:15. But even having to deal with all of this hassle, it was still SO worth it!

~Shoshanah