Wonderful wizard

Mixing magic, drama and pubescent sparks, the sixth Harry Potter installment is the best yet.

By BY DAVID GERMAIN THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Photo by The Associated Press

Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) is still at Hogwarts in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the latest chapter in the popular wand-and-wizards saga.

ADVERSTISMENT

LITTLE ROCK — Harry Potter has kept his fans waiting for two years, the longest school break they have had to endure for a new movie adventure about the teen wizard.

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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

88

Rating: PG

Length: 2 hours, 33 minutes

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It has been worth the wait.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth movie in the fantasy franchise based on J.K. Rowling's books, is the franchise's best so far, blending rich drama and easy camaraderie among the actors with the visual spectacle that until now has been the real star of the series.

The hocus-pocus of it all nearly takes a back seat to the story and characters this time, and the film is the better for that. It doesn't skimp on the quidditch action, sorcery duels or occult pyrotechnics, but those are simply part of the show, not the main attraction.

Previous installments played out in a supernatural bubble bearing little connection to our ordinary little muggle world. Half-Blood Prince brims with authentic people and honest interaction - hormonal teens bonding with great humor, heartache thatwill resonate with anyone who remembers the pangs of first love.

Drop the magic act, and Hogwarts could be any school of self-absorbed geeks, jocks, popular kids and outcasts trying to maneuver through the day. Even the class bad boy provides insight into the behavior of bullies.

Half-Blood Prince escalates the peril for Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and his best pals,Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) and Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint), while giving the threesome who first collaborated as prepubescent kids their best platform yet to show their maturing acting chops.

David Yates, who made 2007's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, returns to direct, his deepening confidence and comfort with the Potter realm on display throughout. Yates stays true to the Rowling recipe yet infuses the film with freshness and energy that makes it seem like a new start, not a stale chapter six.

Harry's big challenge this school year is a clandestine assignment by Hogwarts headmaster Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), who enlists his protege to retrieve a critical memory thatnew Professor Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent) possesses about young Tom Riddle, the future dark Lord Voldemort.

Broadbent gives the best performance yet in a Potter flick, mingling a cock-of-the-walk flamboyance with the deep melancholy of a teacher bearing the shame of disappointment in himself and a star pupil gone bad.

The usual teen high jinks and crises lighten the story with plenty of laughs. Romantic entanglements - which have gradually preoccupied Harry, Hermione, Ron and other classmates as they stumbled into puberty - burst out like a wicked case of acne this year.

Ron is dating bubble-headed bimbo Lavender Brown (Jessie Cave), putting Hermione into a jealous snit. Harry's got his own love triangle, falling for Ron's sister, Ginny (Bonnie Wright), who's dating another student.

Radcliffe, Watson and Grinthave lived these roles for so long - almost half their lives - that Harry, Hermione and Ron seem like second nature to them. Whether their acting careers flourish after Harry Potter or not, they have left an impressive little body of work with these three characters alone, developing them into full-blooded youths who feel real despite their fantastical surroundings.

Most fans know the shocker in store involving Dumbledore and the ominous Professor Snape (Alan Rickman). Like their young co-stars, Gambon and Rickman live and breathe these characters by now, Dumbledore a towering presence of grace and nobility, Snape a delightful cold fish whose actions reveal his tiger-shark stripes.

Others among the returning favorites are Robbie Coltrane as Harry's mountainous ally Hagrid, Maggie Smith as prim Professor McGonagall, Julie Walters asRon and Ginny's genial mom, Evanna Lynch as ditzy Luna Lovegood, and Helena Bonham Carter, who's a wicked wonder as Bellatrix Lestrange, one of Voldemort's fiercest fanatics.

Visual-effects technology definitely has caught up with Rowling's imagination - and the filmmakers have some rowdy fun with their splendid images. The quidditch match on flying broomsticks is like airborne rugby, the way the players hammer into one another. And the broomsticks between the boys' legs take on a bawdy phallic look that wryly complements the sexual themes emerging among the teens.

Yates is also making the twopart adaptation of the seventh and final book, the movies due out in November 2010 and July 2011. Half-Blood Prince should leave fans as eager for those last movies as a high-school junior is for graduation day.

MovieStyle, Pages 35, 40 on 07/17/2009

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