DVDFile

Darkness fell on Hogwarts this year when Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince hit multiplexes. Back in 2001, The Sorcerer's Stone was a breezy, almost constantly cute adventure featuring young folks in various degrees of difficulty and challenge, but never totally in dire peril: In Half-Blood Prince, things get grisly. This seventh installment of the Harry Potter series takes us to the darkest part of night - right before the proverbial narrative dawn of The Deathly Hallows (Part 1 of which hits cinemas next year).

But somehow this leaden, midnight-black tone is something that the Harry Potter franchise wears well. As anyone who hasn't read these books knows, a movie reviewer spouting a synopsis won't make much sense, so I'll keep the recap to a minimum - Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) is in trouble; Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) is on the loose; Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) risks it all to try to save Mr. Potter and the rest of his Wizarding School - but both as movies and books, these later Harry Potter tales make wonderful tonal underbellies to the wide-eyed naivete of J.K. Rowling's initial HP offerings.

And I'd argue that this is why although so many viewers ran out in droves to see Half-Blood Prince in theatres, not many went back two and three times to soak it all in, as was the case with previous installments. I'd argue that it's Half-Blood Prince's murky tone that, while necessary to the storytelling drive of the saga as a whole, doesn't exactly scream out for repeat viewings. That being said, though, those of us who have been Harry Potter fans for years now finally have critics on our side: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince got some of the best multiplex reviews of the summer, with a vast majority of reviewers lauding the film's anomalous mainstream presence and its bravery in digging deep into plot points that other franchises might shy away from (death, torture, evil wizard takeovers, etc.).

This writer has tried to spread the good word of Harry Potter to some of my colleagues, though, and that dog won't hunt: For every one buddy of mine as knee-deep in the fantastical world of HP, I have another who'd rather watch reality-TV reruns than leave the house to watch tweeny wizards yell and scream for nearly three hours. So, unsurprisingly, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a movie for the initiated exclusively - but that's okay. For me, the cinematic journey Harry Potter has offered since its humble beginnings so many years ago has been enjoyably escapist, emotionally engaging, and tonally multi-faceted in ways that most (maybe all) films based on children's literature never are. 

I don't care much for the sad and suspensefully tragic elements of Half-Blood Prince, but it's part of the grand scheme of J.K. Rowling's universe, and that being said, I - like millions of other invisibility-cloak-wearing geeks - am in whole hog.

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