I haven’t seen Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince yet. I’m just too old for a midnight screening at this point, so instead I have tickets for tonight and will no doubt be writing my response tomorrow. For now, to get myself (and all of you) into the proper state of mind, how about some reviews from around the Interwebs?

From the BBC:

Those wanting noisy spectacle and endless action will be disappointed. This is a talky Potter.

It feels long – but not in a bad way. The main characters and the complex plot get a chance to breathe.

Writer Steve Kloves sensibly excises the padding from JK Rowling’s novel – adding new scenes such as the opening attack on London’s Millennium Bridge.

But Death Eater attacks aside, relationships are what interests Yates.

Even when we first meet Harry in a cafe at Surbiton station, he is effortlessly catching the eye of a waitress.

“Harry, you need a shave my friend,” says Dumbledore later, as if we need reminding that the boy Harry is becoming a man.

The Chicago Tribune:

The Potter series has sustained itself because it no longer seems to be concerned about roping in the widest possible global audience. Instead, it’s trying to treat Rowling’s characters with the care and class they deserve, and in spellbinding sequences such as the “liquid memory” flashback to Tom Riddle’s childhood—in which Ralph Fiennes‘ nephew, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, plays the Dark Lord in training—Yates proves he’s the man for the job in cinematic terms, not merely transcriptive ones.

The San Jose Mercury News:

Previous installments played out in a supernatural bubble bearing little connection to our ordinary little Muggle world. “Half-Blood Prince” brims with authentic people and honest interaction – hormonal teens bonding with great humor, heartache that will resonate with anyone who remembers the pangs of first love.

Drop the magic act, and Hogwarts could be any school of self-absorbed geeks, jocks, popular kids and outcasts trying to maneuver through the day. Even the class bad boy provides insight into the behavior of bullies.

From the New York Times:

There must be a factory where the British mint their acting royalty: Hero, who plays the dark lord as a spectrally pale, creepy child of 11, is Ralph Fiennes’s nephew, and Frank is the son of the terrific actor Stephen Dillane (Thomas Jefferson in the HBO mini-series “John Adams”). The younger Mr. Dillane, who plays Voldemort at 16, conveys the seductiveness of evil with small, silky smiles he bestows like dangerous gifts on Jim Broadbent’s Horace Slughorn, a professor whose trembling jowls suggest a deeper tremulousness. When Slughorn, the fear almost visibly leaking from his body, shares the secret of immortality with Voldemort, you feel, much as when Ralph Fiennes raged through “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” in 2005, that something vital is at stake.

If that sense of exigency rarely materializes in “The Half-Blood Prince,” it’s partly because the series finale is both too close and too far away and partly because Mr. Radcliffe and his co-stars Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, as Harry’s friends Hermione and Ron, have grown up into three prettily manicured bores. Unlike the veterans, notably the sensational Alan Rickman, who invests his character, Prof. Severus Snape, with much-needed ambiguity, drawing each word out with exquisite luxury, bringing to mind a buzzard lazily pulling at entrails, Mr. Radcliffe in particular proves incapable of the most crucial cinematic magic. Namely the alchemical transformation of dialogue into something that feels like passion, something that feels real and true and makes you as wild for Harry as for all those enticingly dark forces.

And of course, from Newsarama’s own Lucas Siegel:

It’s amazing to see just how much the actors have grown over the course of 6 films. Here we have a truly breakout performance by Tom Felton, in the role of troubled Draco Malfoy. Draco is intensely conflicted in his mission throughout the film, and plays a much deeper character than the one-note foil of the previous chapters. It’s a remarkable transformation for Draco and a fantastic performance for Felton, as you can clearly see his agony in many dialogue free scenes.

The other standout in a field of solid actors was once again Alan Rickman in possibly the best casting choice in movie history. As Professor Snape, he has a slightly smaller role for the majority of the film, merely popping in here and there (until the end, that is), and the dry wit and ambiguous morale nature comes off perfectly, maybe even better than the previous movies. The other principle actors are all very clearly comfortable in the roles they’ve been playing for years now, and it gives a great sense of realism to this world of fantasy.

Well, I’m ready for my workday to be over so I can head to the theater…

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