In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the gang at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry enters the molten thick of adolescence. Director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves reward them with a film that bubbles and pops with humor and feeling. It flows like fast-moving lava to a climax filled with pyrotechnics. And for once in a summer blockbuster, the fireworks are both emotional and physical. The movie leaves you sated, yet wanting more - just what you want from a series with two entries left to go.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince would be a first-rate fantasy even if the audience weren't invested in the fortunes of boy wizard Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and his friends, Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson). But viewers will respond with paroxysms of affection for actors who rediscover and freshen their characters as they grow from children to complicated young people.
Radcliffe has been gaining in heroic stature while wearing his authority lightly - here he masters a moral sort of guile.
Watson isn't just a touching, brainy charmer; she's also a game, resilient performer, with quicksilver timing. As Hermione, she pulls off rapid turns of phrase and expression that prove alternately poignant and hilarious, whether she's reacting to Ron's public displays of affection for another girl or to Harry's potions-class success. With the chagrin of a competitor and the disapproval of an ethicist, she looks askance at Harry's dependence on the mysterious annotations in his coursebook by a genius called the Half-Blood Prince.
Best of all, who would have thought Grint would become a comic of Shakespearean proportions? He brings off sequences of unlikely athletic success and amorous silliness that are as delightful and pure as any silent clown's.
Potter continues his quest to stop the Satanic Lord Voldemort from achieving ultimate power and taking magic to the dark side, but the stakes are higher from the start. Death Eaters in the form of jet-black streams of cloud and gas terrorize Muggles as well as magic enemies with startling devastation and impunity; one London bridge really does go spectacularly down.
