Harry Potter and the Limp, Sweaty Cock

This is really beginning to piss me off. I don't have a problem with media-crossover films; that is to say that I don't mind films borne out of adaptations from the stage of the page, be it in prose or in graphic novel form. But I do wish that they'd (and by they I mean the filmmakers involved) take the certain things into consideration when adapting. It's a difficult task, this adaptation business; and you have to balance a certain faithfulness to the source material so as not to piss off the fans, whilst making sure the new product (and I use that word deliberately in this cinematic circumstance) is appropriate for its new medium. This is normally where I'd rip into Zack Snyder's Watchmen for abandoning narrative concerns for aesthetic overbearance, but I'll do that later in a retrospective.

No. Today's main culprit is Team Potter; and before I say anything else, for those who somehow still don't know what happens at the end...SPOILER ALERT!

So I went and saw Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince over the weekend. It was ok, I guess, not as gripping as the fifth film, but it didn't suck. As a fan of the books, and as a fan of Potter films 3, 4 and 5 I can say right now with perfect certainty that this isn't an anti-Potter movie rant. But whereas the problem with the film version of The Goblet of Fire was that they tried to fit too much into one film, the issue with HP6 is that nothing really happens. Or at least that's what the movie tried to tell me.

I loved this book. If Order of the Phoenix signified a darker turn in the overarching narrative - much like when Oblivion, the ride at Alton Towers, stops and hangs on the precipice as you stare into the abyss - then this was the vertical drop. Let's not beat around the bush, only one thing of any note really happens in this book, and it is cataclysmic: Dumbledore's death. But the film would have us believe differently. The film would much rather sweep Dumbledore's demise under the carpet in favour of lots of little tidbits of wizarding life: Harry almost picking up a girl at a train station, Ron having girl trouble, Malfoy showing us that he has a bad smell under his nose not to mention a new cupboard that for some reason needs covering with a dark sheet everytime he uses it. And we know Jim Broadbent is good at what he does, we really do, but where the hell was Alan Rickman for the whole of that movie? It's two and a half hours long and it still feels like nothing actually happened!

We missed you Alan

Sigh.

I am being a little harsh. I was actually perfectly entertained for the first two hours of the film, even though some of the acting and dialogue was as wooden as an Ent looking at silver birch in summer. David Yates is probably the best director the series has had so far. Don't get me wrong, bits of those are important, particularly Ron's relationship trouble (God bless you Rupert Grint). But none of it was really explored, it was like the film showed snapshots of interesting bits and then said, 'If you want to probe deeper, learn how to fucking read!' But then, that's always been the case really. And I really did enjoy the first two hours, particularly when a certain long-haired friend of mine began correlating people we know with some of the less admirable characters onscreen. The set pieces were excellent, and the entire look of the film should be commended, the cinematography was on point. There were laughing moments, the quest for the Horcrux was distressing as it should be, and there was even a well executed jumpy fright moment. But from there it went downhill. And it really shouldn't have done.

I'm so angry about this that I'm going to ask this rhetorical question in capitals! WHERE WAS THE FUCKING EMOTIONAL FOCUS DAVID?

Dumbledore's death is earth shattering. It changes everything. Snape's betrayal seems unforgivable. It's so shocking and brutal and cold and terrifying. Or at least it is in the book. But where the hell was any of that in the film? The entire Malfoy-Dumbledore-Snape confrontation is rushed through faster than Speedy Gonzalez on amphetamines. The emotional fallout is pretty much ignored. The funeral is only glimpsed. And when Harry finally catches up with Snape, oh shit I blinked and missed it. After dealing with Sirius' end so well in HP5 I had high hopes for this one. But Dumbledore dies, we don't really care too much because it hasn't really been built up enough (film is a fickle, simple medium, which should technically make such things easier), we don't really see any of the fallout, and when Alan Rickman finally does turn up it takes a moment to remember who he is (so little is he in this film) by which time he's already gone.

Ents: Less wooden than Tom Felton's acting

And then it ends. Looking out towards the horizon. In a kind of Matrix Revolutions style moment that made me want to throw something at the screen.

Imagine if you will, that you are a girl who has been chasing a jock for some time. He's popular and muscular and has good hair and all of his teeth. He's funny and charming and makes you forget the meaning of time and so on and so forth. And you're excited. You know a moment of extreme passion and wild emotion is on the cards and you get ready and the clothes come off and there's lots of kissing and finally, finally...you're greeted with the image of a limp, sweaty, frankly ill-looking cock.

If you can't imagine that, watch HP6 and the underwhelming sense of being emotionally cheated will become clearly apparent.