Harry Potter Delivers Again!

"Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" is a delight of a film. It is by far the funniest of the movies so far, which is strange the source material is wicked dark stuff. Just how dark is the book you ask? Let's just say the scenes where a young Voldermort murders his family, a werewolf devouring children, and a sadistic youngling who enjoy killing don't make into this PG rated Potter film. It's a testament both to the original story and Steven Klove's screenplay that it succeeds so well as an adaptation (leaving this dark biz behind).

One of the best things about the Harry Potter series in print or on the silver screen is how the characters and the actors grow up over time. These actors were young when this bad boy started, peep the picture on the right as evidence. But now as the characters age, the film uses their emotions for some great comedy. There's plenty of snogging, scheming, and maybe even slaying, and I'm not talking about dragons, and all of it is wisely played for laughs.

Technically the film is great. Cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel creates beautiful images in film using dark colors (which totally is metaphoric for the rise of the evil Death Eaters meng). But what really blew me away in this film was the performances, in particular Jim Broadbent as Horace Slughorn. While I don't want to reveal too much, Broadbent really taps into the tragic nature of the character, and it is my hope that he gets at least a nomination from the Academy for his performance, and I hope he doesn't need some of that luck potion to make that happen.

I'm not going to dive into all the potentially catastrophic ways it deviates from the book, but let's just say the Potter nerd (you know the one that has copped books 4-7 at midnight) is a little nervous. But the filmmakers are on a magical tear right now, so I trust, and if that don't deliver, time to bust out those unforgivable curses on those suckas.