Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

City Paper Grade: B+

by Drew Lazor

At the heart of the penultimate installment of J.K. Rowling's series are two equally potent thematic currents — Harry Potter's sour embrace of his role as the One Who Will Save Them All, and the insatiable libidos of the boy wizard and his cohorts. The former's a fertile source for all manner of pitch-black and moody why-me material. The latter, however torturous it may be to the lovesick kids in the thick of it, is chuckle city for anyone over 18. David Yates' adaptation of The Half-Blood Prince (he's also responsible for 2007's stellar Order of the Phoenix) touches both sides of the shore — but skipping between them without tripping is one hell of a challenge.

Set roughly a year after the Dark Lord Voldemort returns and galvanizes the bad guys to terrorize, the film finds Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), in his sixth year at Hogwarts School, growing than ever closer to mentor Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon). The headmaster tasks the increasingly paranoid student with coaxing vital Voldemort-related information from the mind of unretired professor Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent). The game changes when Harry becomes infatuated with an abandoned textbook — mysteriously marked "Property of the Half-Blood Prince" — containing a series of powerful spells he hopes to master to fend off the evil Death Eaters hellbent on laying waste to the world. All the while, Harry's besties Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) try their hands at the courtship game, dating around with varying results and sidestepping their buried feelings for each other, while Ron's sister Ginny (Bonnie Wright) flirts up a storm with Harry in the hopes the kid'll grow a magical pair and snog her already.

These dual storylines sound explicitly incompatible, but Rowling managed to find plenty of shared footing here. (Teens do tend to think love unrequited is the end of the world, after all.) Despite Yates' best efforts, an onscreen version is just unable to convey the more nuanced transitions of the source material; scenes sometimes glance off each other when they're meant to interlock. Thankfully, this is mostly remedied by the conscientious work of veteran Potter screenwriter Steve Kloves, who ensures that the most vital scenes from Rowling's pages are brought to life with tremendous grace.

(drew.lazor@citypaper.net)