Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

I just took a whirlwind trip up to Burton, OH in order to visit my sister and see the midnight release of the latest Harry Potter movie - Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. It was a quick trip but a good one.

I got in around 5pm, but Laurelyn had to deal with some last minute clients and ended up not getting done until around 6pm, so I sat in my car and read with the windows down, breeze blowing. It was quite pleasant. I finished The God Delusion and started One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. When she got off work and had showered (you definitely need a shower after working with alpacas all day), we headed off to a local Mexican restaurant. It was quite tasty and we both enjoyed a margarita. After that we were pretty much killing time until it got late enough to head over to the movie theater. We got there around 10:20pm. A lot of people were already showing up, some in costumes related to the movie, some in costumes that didn't even make sense (an angel??). Anyways, we got good seats right in the middle of one of the theaters, and sat and talked for remaining time, then it started.

Here is my spoiler free review of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, the movie.

The Good:
- The acting has improved and I was very impressed with some of the actors' performances.
- The comedic portions. They did a very good job with all of the teen interactions and amusing parts of the story. We laughed so much!!
- Emotional charge of certain key scenes

The Bad:
- Random insertions of action scenes not in the book (which also is annoying in that time was of the essence)
- Lack of attention to details that make the world come alive, particularly with regard to internal logic of the plot, characters, etc. This seemed to be largely due to (1) messy attempts to shorten the plot by adding in new scenes that don't fit the characters (PS- I am not abject to having to change scenes, but keeping everyone in character is essential) and (2) an attempt to make it more user-friendly for people who haven't read the books or paid close attention to the other movies.
- Lack of carrying through certain plots that are started
- Drastic cutting/lack of the scope of the final climatic sequence in the book
- Emotional charge of certain key scenes

I will see it again, maybe even this weekend, and I am sure in a week or two I will be totally in love with the movie despite its flaws. Right now I am a bit peeved.

After the movie we headed back to Laurelyn's house, where we both crashed. I woke up at 11am and she was already at work again, so I headed home, back here to Columbus. Talk about a whirlwind trip!