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Nothing I say, no matter what any other critic may say, about the latest Harry Potter film is going to make a lick of difference to fans of the franchise. Like Twilight, that other young adult novel-turned-film whose second installment is due in the fall, Potter fans are as devoted as they are legion. Unlike the vampire romance property, Potter was a known variable when it was green-lighted for production and the project has a major studio with major dollars behind it (rumor has it those major dollars total around $250 million). More importantly it has better source material.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the sixth and penultimate film in the series (if you count the two parts of Deathly Hallows as one long film). As is well documented by now, Harry is the Chosen One that is going to defeat the Dark Lord, in a wizardly end game, to save the world. As the film begins, so does another year at Hogwarts and this year (and movie) is one that is decidedly more personal for Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson). The kids are quickly turning into young adults and the rumblings of youthful romance are in the air. Harry is moving on from his split with Cho to Ron's sister Ginny (Bonnie Wright), and jealously rears its ugly head for Hermione when Ron makes goo-goo eyes at another student.

While the hormones kick in, Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) demands Harry get some dire information about Voldemort's youth from Hogwarts' returning professor Slughorn (Jim Broadbent), and Harry allows his suspicions of Draco (Tom Felton) to run wild. And of course, the ambiguously allied Snape (Alan Rickman, fabulous as usual) and Bellatrix (Helena Bonham Carter doing her standard wacky goth chick) are causing trouble and committing homicide. Oh, and there's now a need to find an item called a Horcrux, a thingamajig that holds pieces of one's soul.

Director David Yates (Order of the Phoenix, Deathly Hallows) and series writer (part five excepted) Steve Kloves have plastered on the darkness and foreboding pretty thickly for Half-Blood Prince, lending the film a sense of forthcoming doom that is an ideal set up for the grand finale. The film opens with a spookily thrilling attack on wizards and Muggle alike, with London getting bombarded by black smoke bombs and laying the foundation for the nastiness to come. Bearing that in mind, Yates handles the magical action of Half-Blood Prince with more aplomb than he does the quiet emotion. Alfonso Cuaron, for example, shed a lot of plot in favor of the story's sensitive heart, which is why Prisoner of Azkaban remains the best of the series so far. It's also why the second half of this episode is the stronger.

Though the bloated running time is frightening for some of us, the film never really drags, and you won't be glancing at your watch every 20 minutes. But it does lurch uncomfortably on occasion when teen angst is front and center. Fortunately, Stuart Craig's production design is as rich as ever and so there's something to look at if and when the mind wanders.

If you haven't seen any of the films or read any of the books, you're probably not going to start with this one. But on the off chance you're tasked with acting as official escort Half-Blood Prince isn't really difficult to follow. J. K. Rowling's books, popular though they were, weren't cutting edge narrative. As a film, Half-Blood Prince stands alone reasonably enough for newbie viewers to get into with a minimum of mumbled "Who's that guy?". Harry's classic hero position is never in question, and by the time Half-Blood Prince's big revelations happen it becomes clear that the real action will arrive in 2010 and 11.

In creating the books, Rowling wrapped a modern coming-of-age drama dealing with death, fear, and acceptance within it and connected with millions of readers of all ages. And that has always been Harry Potter's strength. The thoroughness of the Potter universe - it has its own rules, laws, physics, media - is what sets it apart from its half-baked counterparts. Yes, the framework is as old as genre literature, and both series use every convention known to the fantasy genre and play fast and loose with some of the hoarier elements of the wizards and warlocks subset. But Rowling and the films' directors are unflinching in their devotion to that universe allowing the larger themes to shine through. No one questioned whether or not there was "one ring to rule them all", or that some dude in a volcano was plotting the destruction of Middle Earth; likewise, no one questions the magic at the heart of the story here. Which is precisely what good fantasy should do. It's been said that speculative fiction is the only truly contemporary fiction around, and Rowling proved it on the page. Here's hoping Yates uses the extra running time next year to prove it on screen.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince opened in Hong Kong Wednesday.

(HK Edition 07/18/2009 page4)