I've never read any of the Potter books, so I watched HP & the HBP as a movie plain and simple, and found myself bored to tears. Of course the art direction and design are again spectacular, but the story is a loose patchwork of disparate elements that is far from compelling and often seems unacceptably random. Why, for instance, does Dumbledore need to drink the fluid that contains the horcrux? It is also quite galling that characters who possess impressive powers of magic never use them at obvious times. Dumbledore is able to magically transport himself and Potter to a desolate rock in the sea (though it's unclear why they would stop there except for creating a nice shot), but then when he has to cross the lake in the cave, he has to conjure up a boat
? Logic is nowhere to be found; the Hogwarts management must be senile to keep allowing the obviously evil Malfoy in, and blind not to suspect Snape. And while Voldemort's cronies have ample opportunity to kill Potter, they refrain from doing so because Voldemort has to do it himself. Why are villains always so unpragmatic? Of course a movie about magic requires suspension of disbelief. But that doesn't mean the makers can get away with anything. And while there is much talk of the more serious, 'psychological' nature of this installment, it all struck me as pretty obvious and very superficial. It's all very well to turn Malfoy into a doubting, troubled youngster all of a sudden, but how did that come about? Nobody cares to explain that to the viewer. In all, this is an overlong, self-important offering that ploddingly drags along to an unsatisfying end. The Prisoner of Azkaban remains, by a wide margin, the best of the Potter films.
