In the latest adventure, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, things are getting worse. Voldemort is tightening his grip on the Muggle and wizarding worlds and Hogwarts is no longer the safe-haven it once was. Suspecting danger may lie within the school walls, Harry works with Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) to find the key to unlock Voldemort’s defenses.

The duo attempt to find their solution first through a collection of stored memories in Dumbledore’s office and perhaps in the memory of the well-connected and unsuspecting Professor Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent), Dumbledore’s old friend and colleague who may hold crucial information about the Dark Lord. Meanwhile, in case the forces of evil weren’t enough to contend with, the sixth-year students of Hogwarts are also under attack from altogether different adversary from within: raging hormones.

The normal pattern of a film franchise is to start strong, and go downhill from there, no matter how many movies are in the series. The Potter franchise has been the exception. The film series started weak but picked up considerably with the third entry, Alfonso Cuaron’s terrific 2004 The Prisoner of Azkaban. While Cuaron’s film and the two subsequent entries, 2005’s Goblet of Fire and 2007’s Order of the Phoenix, kept the spirit and general storyline of JK Rowling’s beloved novels, they were not afraid to change things up in order to give the films an identity separate from their literary source (a problem that plagued the first two films).

A fair amount of subplots, characters and situations were jettisoned, much to the chagrin of fans worldwide. In the end however, the slimming-down effect proved to be of great cinematic benefit, especially when it came to ‘Phoenix’, a film whose literary source was quite good, but far too long for its own benefit. The practice of downsizing the material for maximum box office impact continues with the Half-Blood Prince. Writer Steve Kloves (who adapted all but one of the Potter books) ups the comedic and romantic aspects, at the cost of flashbacks chronicling the evolution of Voldermort. Very few of these make it to the screen: disappointing given the rich backstory Rowling created. A better balance of menace and romance could have really elevated the movie’s dramatic tension and payoff.

Make no mistake: David Yates is a very talented director. He knows how to tell and pace a story, develop the characters and coax great performances from his casts. If you only know Yates’s work from the Potter films, you owe it to yourself to see his 2003 British series, State of Play. His work on Order of the Phoenix proved to be as impressive as his work on Play, albeit on a grander scale. Complain all you want about the downsizing of the plot, but the Prince Yates presents is fast-moving, involving and very entertaining, and easily the best in the series after Azkaban.

But for all Yates does with the action the movie can’t escape a feeling of anti-climax. In the novel, the conclusion packed an emotional punch and nicely set up The Deathly Hallows. On film, events merely transpire, omitting one key event en route to ending the film on a quieter note. Here’s hoping that the previous film’s sense of urgency returns in 2010 and 2011 when the series wraps up with the two-part adaptation of The Deathly Hallows.

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