I did not like The Half Blood Prince;
I did not like it then or since.

n.b. In case I am not the last person to see this movie, I have tried not to put any spoilers in this post.

Today's Beat the Heat technique was to head for an air-conditioned cinema to see the latest Harry Potter film. I looked longingly at the start times for "The Time Traveler's Wife", but I have also been wanting to see the HP, and my husband was much more likely to enjoy that than TTW. So, in we went. After the obligatory half hour of previews, the movie began. It was slow and dark, except for some nauseating special effects and some rather charming teen romance moments.

First, the special effects: It occurred to me that these movies are aimed at children and young adults. In fact, when we walked into the theatre, Dr. David Suzuki was on screen, giving advice to students on how to minimize their impact on the environment (use both sides of notebook paper - turn off your computer when you aren't using it). The stomach-turning scene in this movie made me wonder about the popularity of nauseating special effects among the young. Could that be an important part of our development? Perhaps it's like a baby discovering his toes and becoming obsessed with them for a while. Maybe at some point it's important to kids to say Oh, cool! I have a stomach - feel it churn! If that's the case, I suffer from arrested development. I have never enjoyed being sick.

Then, there was the teen love stuff. It really was charming. I have no complaints about it, except that it's disconcerting, the way these children have morphed, virtually overnight, into hormone-soaked teenagers. And I know that the suddenness is more a function of my age than theirs. It's not their fault.

Hormones and nausea aside, though, my primary problem with The Half Blood Prince is that it seems like a series of vignettes, rather than one coherent story. Also, it lost me several times - If I had been watching it at home, I suspect I would have left the room, looking for a book to read. Furthermore, if I were reading a book, and I found my attention wandering the way it did during this movie, I would toss the book aside and check out another author.

p.s. My husband agrees with me on all these points. Maybe I should have dragged him to The Time Traveler's Wife.