Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince–A Magical Episode Without Sex or Swearing

I’m a bit of a Johnny Come Lately to the Harry Potter scene.  Years ago when the first books came out, I didn’t read them.  I just didn’t.  There are times in a woman’s life when there are too many kids demanding one’s time and attention for a woman to ever really relax enough to get into a good book.  If she is able to grab a few minutes of uninterrupted time to get into a book, it isn’t long before she’s sound asleep with her head rolled over to the side and drool trickling out of the side of her mouth.  It is the life of a mother with young children.  It was my life until just a few years ago. 

Last summer, money was still tight in post divorce recovery world, my cars were costing an extraordinary amount of the monthly budget to drive and repair, so we just stayed home.  This wasn’t a bad thing at all, and ended up being only moderately inconvenient.  For fun, I decided to have a reading competition with my children.  Surprisingly they all got into it.  Something about putting your name on a piece of paper with the title and number of pages for the world to see, I guess. 

I read every one of the Harry Potter books last summer start to finish.  When I got done, my kids and I watched all the movies (borrowed from a friend of my oldest daughter). 

I continue to be amazed at J.K. Rowling’s creativity and detail.  Some authors write detail and it bores you to death.  Others write detail, it moves the story along, but you could skip it all and just read the dialogue and be none the worse for the wear.  Rowling is my hero.  She writes what she needs to write in order to clearly and crisply and accurately paint the picture for the reader.  I could go off about her excellent writing but that’s not my purpose here. 

I’m here to write about the movies. Specifically, the most recent one which just opened.  I mention Rowling’s writing, simply because as I watched each of the movies with eager anticipation, I repeatedly exclaimed, “That’s just how I imagined it!”  Hogwarts, the train they travelled on, the Dementors, the Death Eaters, the feasts at Hogwarts,the Quiddich match, the moving pictures, the Weasleys, the ghosts, Hagrid, Luna Lovegood, Snape, all of them!  The Half-Blood Prince was no exception. The only persona that I did not envision the way they were portrayed was Voldemort.  I know they created him to appear evil and snakish.  I believe they did a great job with that, but I envisioned him with hair and a nose, evil and sinister, yes, but definitely with hair and nose.  Even so, I think it is a testimony to J.K. Rowling’s incredibly effective writing that movie makers could so closely and accurately replicate Rowling’s fantasy.  I also think it is a testimony to the brilliant folks who worked on creating these movies for our enjoyment that they actually, for the most part, stayed true to the book.  You simply can’t improve upon Rowling’s work in my opinion.

Last night, with great anticipation and excitement, my children and I walked into a completely full theatre named appropriately The Griffendor Theatre (it was one of four theatres showing the movie that evening each named for one of the four houses) to watch our first Harry Potter movie on the big screen. 

“Four tickets for Harry Potty,”  I said.  “Ooops, sorry, Harry Potter.”  It really was a mistake on my part.  It’s a good thing I didn’t say Parry Hotter as I usually transpose the beginning letter’s of words when I’m excited or tired.  Tonight, I was a bit of both.

We took our seats and fortunately arrived early enough to get decent seating. 

The movie did not disappoint.  From the get go, it was filled with suprises and continued to be incredibly accurate!  Yes, there were a ton of the cliche kind of things jumping out of closets, swooshing through the air unexpectedly and  grabbing Harry from out of water.  Even though I knew every bit of it was coming, I still jumped a mile high, and I wasn’t alone. 

As I thought about how much fun that movie was last night, I realised that one thing I love about the Harry Potter movies and the books is that there isn’t any swearing or overt sex in them.  I’m no Girl Scout here, but I do get tired of the plethora of expletives that litter the entertainment world in the name of good acting.  I especially hate it when such words seem to be thrown in just to pander to the viewer instead of promoting the supposed nature of the character saying the words.  I feel the same way about the gratuitous sex scenes that are there simply to sell tickets and not to further the plot at all.  Harry Potter had none of these typically annoying ”pandering to the public” problems. 

I was even able to take my 8-year-old daughter who begged to come with us to the show. I wasn’t goint to let her, but I relented because, after all, she told me, “I’ve seen all the other ones. I can handle it.”  Well, she was wrong.  Some of the scary stuff got to her.  I’d forgotten about the death eaters and the part with Dumbledore falling to his death wasn’t exactly great, but she was  tired and had fallen asleep on my lap long before that.  She missed most of the movie anyway.  Even so, I wouldn’t advise taking younger kids or kids who are especially fearful (and fearful in no way describes my daughter) to this movie.   I mean, I remember being scared by the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz.  Their images haunted me for years!   I can’t imagine what these scary images will do to a youngster with a vivid imagination and no ability yet to separate fact from fantasy. 

Even so, Harry Potter is an epic movie, with amazing effects and lots of action.  The movie remained true to the book, and it was an absolute delight to watch from beginning to end.   I’d definitely recommend it, but read the books first! 

I loved it!   I’m so glad there are still two more movies to look forward to! 

I’m still afraid of flying monkeys though.