Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Critic Reviews

The filmmakers have found a way to refresh our eyes and enhance our appreciation for this rich, amazing creation.

The lag time between the final books and the movies has drained much of the urgency from this screen adaptation, which, far more than any of the previous films, feels like an afterthought.

David Yates knows how to play all the cards. Although a touch ungainly, his film is solidly constructed, with lots of fine effects.

Darker, more hormonal, more teenage-angsty and sadly more boring.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is spellbinding, even though it is more grounded in reality and less fanciful than previous installments.

[Half-Blood Prince] might be the most enjoyable Harry Potter movie yet for people who don't particularly care about Harry Potter movies.

Steve Kloves has written five of the Harry Potter screenplays, and The Half-Blood Prince reeks of formula.

I'd be lying if I didn't say this movie gave me as much innocent pleasure as any I've seen this year.

As for the ever-impressive supporting cast, neither a delightfully befuddled Jim Broadbent nor a wild-eyed Helena Bonham Carter can upstage Alan Rickman, who again proves invaluable as the slithery Prof. Snape.

Potions play a pivotal part in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and I wish I'd been able to find one for patience.

So many actors shine in so many ways: Carter hisses deliciously, Broadbent sucks up beautifully. Watson shudders with frustration and heartbreak, Felton shudders with anger and fear.

Readers may decry the way the script deletes some scenes and adds others. But this film offers its own unique contribution to J.K. Rowling's beloved series.

With its deft handling of teen yearning and affection, Half-Blood Prince maneuvers mysteries of heart and hankering that resound in worlds magic and Muggle.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince isn't great family entertainment -- it's great entertainment, period, a blockbuster with true heart and real humanity alongside the high-stakes struggles and brilliant effects.

No, it's not a larky kid-pic. We're firmly in the realm of English horror, as one set of sallow Brits battles another even sallower.

All in all, despite the verve that drives the grander set pieces, it's hard to avoid the sensation of a film toiling overtime to convince itself of its own solemnity.

I admired this Harry Potter. It opens and closes well, and has wondrous art design and cinematography as always, only more so.

As the concerns of novelist Rowling's characters gravitate increasingly toward matters of the heart and the hormones, the Potter films are leaving childhood behind. Yet the friendship of the central trio remains the key to the magic.

Director David Yates presides over some gorgeous CGI set pieces, but all the real magic comes from the scrum of ace British character actors.

Half-Blood Prince is a bubbling cauldron of hormonal angst, rife with romance and heartbreak, jealousy and longing.

Unlike most film series, the Potter movies haven't weakened along the way.

As beautifully made as it is -- and this may be the best-looking, best-directed Potter film yet -- there's an undeniable level of frustration built into Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Half-Blood Prince is plenty good in its own right as a stand-alone piece of entertainment. But it also serves the series well, delivering on perhaps its most-important requirement: It makes you really want to see the next one.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth and worst installment yet, is two and a half hours of paralyzing tedium, featuring another colossal waste of British talent and a plot a real witch couldn't find with a crystal ball.

Dazzlingly well made and perhaps deliberately less fanciful than the previous entries, this one is played in a mode closer to palpable life-or-death drama than any of the others and is quite effective as such.