At Hogwarts in year six, a young wizard’s thoughts turn to the hot chick in Incantations class, and the potions most of interest are love potions. While Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) skulks around moodily looking strangely like David Bowie in the Thin White Duke era, Harry (Radcliffe), Hermione (Watson) and Ron (Grint) spend an inordinate percentage of Half-Blood Prince obsessing about who’s snogging whom.
Yes, there’s that whole Voldemort problem to deal with, and certainly people are disappearing mysteriously while Dumbledore (Gambon) rumbles darkly but unhelpfully about the dark secrets of Tom Riddle, the boy who would become Ultimate Evil. But the teen leads engage in the rather thin plotting only intermittently, and screenwriter Steve Kloves happily follows their lead.
For Potter-ites, there are plenty of satisfactions to be had, but the fun mostly comes from recognizing plot points from the novel merely suggested onscreen. When Harry finally gets engaged in some action, the climax is suitably exciting and dark, but it feels oddly tacked on after two-plus hours spent mostly in the world of high-school romantic intrigues.
