Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - THREE stars

• A lot of people who have read the book, didn't like the movie. The movie has received mixed reviews. I saw it with a mini HP maniac not having read the books myself. Both of us loved the movie and wondered how someone who has read it [or not] can't love it.
  
• For those of you out there like me, who haven't read any HP book, please understand the basics before watching an HP movie, like my little HP maniac says there is more to HP than magic. Magic is only the template JKR uses to drive home some age old philosophies, says she :)
  
• There are many ways to interpret the HP series, 1. The victory of good over evil 2. How the process to achieve something is more important than the goal itself 3. How heroes don't always come announced or know of their powers themselves, i.e. anyone can be a hero 4. No amount of ESP devices can overthrow a good heart nurtured painfully with love 5. If you believe you are lucky you will behave like you are [Ron's match winning]...etc. etc. etc. All this must be difficult enough to put into a book in an honest way, imagine what it must be like to translate that into a motion picture. The movie stays very true to the spirit of the book, even I [someone who hasn't read the book] can confidently say that. It just has that authentic feel about it.
  
• They say HP stories and movies are too complicated and dark for kids, but the fact that kids enjoy and swear by them is a clear indicator that kids can process complicated and dark things far better than adults can, simply because they have not been overpowered by staid education in the mind numbing lives of adults. The kids I saw in the cinema couldn't have been dragged out of there midway, even if there was a bomb scare. This was just TOO important to them. And I could clearly see why. The applause they gave when the names rolled on the screen created an energy you must experience to believe.
  
• The story on which this movie is based is very dark and hence understandably the makers have tried their best to paint it [in most places] with cheerful teenage romantic antics, to make it less depressing. But JKR loyalists might find this a bit too much and unnecessary, they would have wanted the movie to remain as dark as the book. I guess the pressures of commercialisms would have forced the makers to choose this shift, given that the movie [unlike the book] has to cater to non HP readers too.
  
• The scene where Dumbledore is killed is very well done, just like the rest of the movie - no over dramatization with time wasting tactics, every minute of this movie has been used well. I can only imagine what HP fans must have felt when they read about this scene for the first time, not knowing that it would happen, gosh!
  
• How the director and script writers decide what to include and what to keep out of the film [and yet stay true to it], from a book of such stature, beats me.
• Fabulous movie, MUST see...even for non HP fans/readers.