I went to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince last night with Jon and Mark, and it was surprisingly painful. The movie was okay, though definitely one of the dullest HP movies I’ve sat through, but the real kicker was the company around us. The theater was packed, of course, and while I can stand the constant food rustling, random whispers from around the room, and uproarious laughter at not-quite-funny scenes, the two teenagers to my right were a real pain in the ass.

They were two girls that sat right next to me, which was annoying to begin with because they could have left an empty seat, but whatever. Apparently they preferred to sit next to me rather than the lady three seats down. They whispered once every couple of minutes, and I’m not exaggerating the frequency. I really began to take notice when one of them started coughing about as often; it was a hoarse, hacking cough that did not stop. Honestly, if you can’t help but cough that often, why would you go to a movie theater, especially for a movie that’s so popular and thus packed? So that was annoying enough, and she was inconsiderate for coming, especially with her rustley bag of cough drops, but I could still get over that… Except for the talking. Because every time she coughed, she whispered to her friend. Half the time, they weren’t even particularly quiet whispers. I was pretty incredulous, because usually people are a bit sheepish about whispering in a packed theater because it pisses everyone around them off and they know it. Not these girls. I overheard, clearly, the majority of what they said, and what I couldn’t make out was no less annoying because it was a distracting hissing sound right beside me.

After becoming aware of their chatter and coughing, I couldn’t not notice it, so the rest of the movie I was halfway distracted because of those two dimwits. I leaned forward and gave them pointed looks but didn’t say anything to them, which I probably should have. Argh, I never confront strangers that are blatantly rude or inconsiderate. I know they were aware of me staring, though, because I caught the cougher staring back at me a couple of times. Not that that dissuaded her from talking so much, though, nor did it stop her friend from whipping out her slider cell phone every ten minutes or so to text something. “OMG im in harry poter right now!” And each time she’d finish typing and blinding the people beside and behind her, she’d snap her phone shut with a nice click.

Okay, so on to the actual movie content. I’m a big fan of the books and don’t understand why directors feel the need to muck with an obviously good thing. Rowling did it right, that’s why the books sold so damn much and she got the big bucks; you don’t need to come along and alter major things just for the heck of it. For example, they threw in a fight that never existed in the books, and took out a major one. What was that cornfield scene? Besides being a boring non-fight, that is. And what happened to the big fight scene at Hogwarts at the end? The Death Eaters strolled through the castle unhindered, which is the opposite of what happened in the book. It was such an awesome and exciting read, I figured the director would jump on the chance to put that in the movie. Nope, instead he wiped it out completely, and from what I read online, it’s because there’s another fight at Hogwarts in book 7, and he didn’t want two fight scenes at Hogwarts. Jon commented that he noticed toward the end that nothing had really happened in the movie, like no big exciting fights, and I had to explain that Rowling had built up to a big exciting fight but the director saw fit to cut it.

It’s just bizarre, because it felt like the movie dragged on, filled with too many long, silent stares and dramatic looks. The comedy also felt exaggerated to me, especially Ron’s dopey love potion scene. The characters felt like they weren’t responding as they should, like when Katie Bell finally hit the ground after the locket bit and Hermione, etc. just stood by, staring. Even when Hagrid came up to help her, he didn’t seem particularly panicked. Snape didn’t have enough anger and unhingedness at the end when Harry called him a coward, he was all “yep, that’s me, I’m him” and walked off. And what was with the alteration where, when Harry’s in the tower with Dumbledore, he’s free to move? He was supposed to have Petrificus totalus cast on him such that he can’t move to help Dumbledore, and he’s all panicked and going crazy with the urge to do something, while in the movie he was just wandering around like he was stoned, perfectly able to help but choosing not to.