The Book is Always Better

Went to see "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" at midnight, and while I won't write any plot spoilers I will say was fairly pleased with the movie. But for me, that's not saying much. Now I know the movie can never really be exactly like the book. For one, everyone's imagination is unique so everyone is always going to envision sets, characters and scenes a little differently. Secondly, directions and script writers love to have room to be creative and make their own spin on things. And lastly, it's hard make a book that is more than 400 pages into a movie without either leaving scenes out or making it ridiculously long. And "Half-Blood Prince" clocked in at about 2 hours and 30 minutes.

I think this movie was one of my favorites and I certainly liked it better than "Order of the Phoenix." There were just three things I would have changed: Ginny and Harry's relationship was dealt with kind of awkwardly, there was a whole small scene that didn't even occur in the book and did not do anything to help the plot of the movie along and they changed the ending - as usual. For some reason the director's never like the movie to end like the book. But in this movie they really changed it and left out probably the last 50 pages or so.

But it had some good scenes that were pretty much exactly what I imagined when reading it, and the movie had some good lighthearted moments, too. I also cried a little at the end, but not as much as I probably would have if they had stuck to the ending of the book.

I'll give it four stars, which for me is pretty good.

The next book to movie that I'm anxious about is "The Time Traveler's Wife." It comes out this year and my fingers are crossed that it will do the book justice. But I won't count too hard on it.