The Harry Potter set from out household took in the midnight showing of "Harry Potter And the Half-Blood Prince" to general disappointment. One reviewer did assure the stay at home crowd that the film worked well as a spoof - she laughed throughout - but I suspect that was not the director's intention.
I am also reliably informed that there was a bit of an audience revolt. At one point, as Harry and Dumbledore are in a mysterious and dangerous cave destroying Voldemort's horcrux, Harry is pulled into a subterranean lagoon by a seemingly dead person. "Oh, bullshit" shouted one avid reader in attendance, "that never happened in the book".
She was right.
My daughter and her friends were disappointed.
Posted by: bad | July 15, 2009 at 01:49 PM
Does it have to be a play by play of the book? That was the boring aspect of the first movie, I thought. It was as if I'd seen it before.
I haven't seen this movie, and I don't know if I will. I just balk at the idea a movie has to be akin to a book-on-tape.
Posted by: MayBee | July 15, 2009 at 02:03 PM
MayBee, the Bourne movies certainly weren't books-on-tape.
Posted by: PD | July 15, 2009 at 02:21 PM
... although judging from previous discussion, it appears that disparity caused many here (not me) to dislike the movies for that reason.
Posted by: PD | July 15, 2009 at 02:29 PM
Quick rule of thumb: the more closely the movie adheres to the book, the better the movie will be. For proof, just see every movie in the Tom Clancy series. Each veered further away from Clancy's books, and each got progressively worse as a result.
Posted by: paul zummo | July 15, 2009 at 02:38 PM
It's a tough call. A lifeless play-by-play is not interesting - I thought the first 2-3 HP movies suffered from this. But I do appreciate close adaptations. It takes some inspiration to walk that line (Gone With The Wind, Rebecca, and To Kill A Mockingbird being great examples).
I don't bother with the HP movies anymore because I like the images in my head just fine. Same with the Narnia films.
Posted by: Porchlight | July 15, 2009 at 03:23 PM
As I said before, I enjoyed the Bourne books and the movies both. But I saw the movies first. Then I looked up the books and went into them with the understanding from checking reviews that they'd be way different from the books. So I enjoyed each for what it was and didn't judge one from the other.
Posted by: PD | July 15, 2009 at 03:37 PM
I haven't seen it yet but will still go.I like the movie to adhere to the book but all directors take poetic license. That's what artists do.
Posted by: maryrose | July 15, 2009 at 03:41 PM
Funny personal HP story.
Lurker Daughter #2 is addicted to them...re-reads them all even now just for fun. As an adult. Has total recall on important things. Like HP.
Mrs. Lurker makes commercials and does voice-over work, and so she "reads well out loud".
Combine statement #1 with statement #2 and you know what happens on our annual 14 hour drives from DC to Nantucket. By about Connecticut, my wife is tired of reading HP to the car and (like every single dad has done reading bedtime stories) she would try to skip things. Every single time a little voice from the back would say "you skipped something, Mommy!"
Me...I do not like the movies because I cannot adjust from the voices Mrs. Lurker has assigned to the characters to those in the movies.
Posted by: Old Lurker | July 15, 2009 at 03:44 PM
My daughter has been a Harry Potter fanatic since she was old enough to read. Hate to hear that the movie stinks, she'll be disappointed.
By the way, doesn't J.K. have any say about the scripts etc.? I would think that she does, since at this point she has more money than any studio around.
Posted by: verner | July 15, 2009 at 03:45 PM
I heard the same reviews from a number of people today. One of my favorite movies, Sense and Sensibility (Emma Thompson scripted), is IMHO one of the best adaptations ever.
Posted by: flodigarry | July 15, 2009 at 06:01 PM
Going tomorrow with granddaughter-by-heart and her cousin(both 13)..should be fun watching them squirm when the "kissing" starts.
Posted by: glenda | July 15, 2009 at 06:04 PM
If you want to listen to HP on a road trip, by all means buy the CDs read by Jim Dale. I never read the HP texts; I listened to them and prefer it.
Posted by: sbw | July 15, 2009 at 06:35 PM
Old Lurker - Give Mrs. Lurker a break and listen to Jim Dale read them. He may not be as good as her in your mind, but he does a great job. He's been pretty much a constant companion on our long road trips over the past 10 years (with two very in-to-it House of Gryffindor girls in the car). And as a footnote, the Gryffindor's in our house saw the midnight show last night and pronounced it a big success.
Posted by: Mike Huggins | July 15, 2009 at 06:48 PM
Thanks, guys. We did give the kid Jim Dale's great CD's. She still wants Mom to read them...
One year we took a HP break and I made them listen to Atlas Shrugged all the way up and all the way back...
But now they're grown so we're off the hook! I think they fly in to avoid the car ride.
Posted by: Old Lurker | July 15, 2009 at 07:05 PM
I wonder if some of the "kids" who are disappointed with this movie are just growing up. Maybe HP in movie form has simply lost it's "magic" because they are maturing??
Haven't seen it, but definitely will when it is on DVD.
Posted by: centralcal | July 15, 2009 at 07:38 PM
I thought they were talking about Harry Reid
Posted by: matt | July 15, 2009 at 09:11 PM
May every Jack has his Jill. Still Don't have a date?
___ ^_^Blackwhiteconnect.com^_^____
There are Over millions of profiles from all over the world!
You can get their pictures, phone numbers, locations, and almost any information.Everything is FREE!
Don't forget to tell your friends!
Posted by: sevenjoyce | July 15, 2009 at 09:41 PM
Just saw the movie and it was not that bad. It does have a darker tone than the other movies, but then the book does too. Taking some "artistic license" is normal. All in all an enjoyable movie. Oh, and not really a lot of "kissing", less than advertised I think. The kids are growing up and getting better. Go, enjoy, lose yourself and forget about BO (unless you think of him as "He who must not be mentioned". Oh, by the way my wife and I are 62, and I have read the books.
Posted by: lynndh | July 15, 2009 at 09:44 PM
After the first three, the option of having the movies faithfully follow the books was off the table. The books went from 150 to 700 pages. You could easily have broken every one of the last 4 books into parts 1, 2, & 3 and had the child actors working to their 30s on them. (We would be on the third challenge of the triwizard tournament at this point.)
Even so, once you accept you have to cut massive amounts of material and occasionally add small bits to make the shortened story make sense, I still object to adding things not in the book just to add a special effect or contrived conflict. That sounds like what they did with HBP.
Posted by: CAL | July 16, 2009 at 03:32 PM
CAL
What's the expletive in Harry B_____ Potter?
Posted by: Jacques | July 16, 2009 at 04:39 PM
Half Blood Prince. No expletive required.
Posted by: CAL | July 16, 2009 at 06:20 PM
Just saw the movie Wednesday night. I loved it. I liked it better than the book, which was my least favorite of the Harry Potter series. They did cut out a lot, particularly the early parts of the book. The horcrux scene though in the book was a dramatic highlight, and it was not developed enough in the movie. The difficulty reaching the horcrux was underplayed, which limited the dramatic effect.
Posted by: Paul | July 17, 2009 at 12:35 PM