Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was a great movie which was actually better than the book in many ways. But first let me get my gripes with the movie out of the way:
+I felt some scenes were really rushed.
+I felt they tried to wrap the movie up too quickly. The ending should have been extended.
+They didn't delve deep enough into the Half-Blood Prince potion book storyline.
+They didn't set up Aragog's death sufficiently. I would think that the audience wanted to know why Hagrid was standing over a dead spider.
Now this is what I think the movie did right:
+The film was visually gorgeous. It was by far the most visually attractive/visually interesting Potter film. Starting wtih Prisoner of Azkaban the films have had a beautiful gothic look to them and in HBP that style is in top form.
+The movie had good dialogue and it was genuinely funny in many parts. I always felt that the movies were horrible in the humor department, but this one was on point except for a few awkward parts here and there.
+Being worried about them focusing too much on the romance, I was actually very happy with the way it turned out. The actress that played Lavender was excellent and they made the romance parts seem more grounded and authentic than in the book.
+The acting performances were top-notch (well, for a Potter film anway) in this movie. The adults always do an excellent job, but the kids (well they're not really kids anymore, but you get what I mean) always seemed to turn in awkward performances. However, in HBP, the kids turn in great performances as well.
+The flash-backs were handled extremely well. Potter fanboys are going to be mad that so many of the flashbacks were done away with, but these people never seem to be able to understand that film and books are two different mediums and so the movie and the books can't line up exactly. With the flashbacks, the moviemakers took out the best stuff, streamlined it, did justice to the most exciting parts and thus made them acceptable in a fast-paced medium such as a film. In films, it's important to try to keep stuff like flashbacks to a minimum because too much backward motion bores the audience. The filmakers mantained a good balance.
+I was extremely skeptical with how the movie was going to turn out because HBP is such a transitional book. It's not all that eventful, there are not many setpieces, it's sort of a slow-burner, it's not very stand-alone, but rather is there to set up Book 7, etc. However, I was pleasently surprised at how good a job the moviemarkers did in the way of taking material not well-suited for adaption and making an interesting movie out of it and how good a job the filmakers did in the way of making HBP function somewhat (key word being somewhat, I don't think it's possible to make the last two volumes function completely as stand-alone stories) as a stand-alone story.
I'd argue that the single most important factor in their success in this area was the emphasis of Slughorn and his plot arc and the way that they handled the Malfoy plot arc. The fact that they introduced Harry's mission to get Slughorn to divulge his memory right away, making it appear as a mission very central to the progression of the story (I felt the movie put more importance on this than the book and thus the movie seems less meandering than the book and more purposeful), was essential in building anticipation.
The Malfoy plot arc was handled beautifully. In the book, the reader is given clues that Malfoy is up to something, but since the book is somewhat limited to Harry's perspective, we only truly know what he's up to through dialogue when he lays it all out at the end. In the book, we are told more than shown. The movie shows was Draco is up to, however, by showing him with the vanishing cabinet and showing him testing it out with a bird and an apple, etc. Basically, the movie reworks the vanishing cabinet stuff so that we can see that endeavor in real-time and not hear about it second hand through Draco. I say with no reservation that the Malfoy plot arc was absolutely handled better in the film than in the book.
+I felt the movie did a good job of making what seemed kind of flat in the book have gravity in the movie. For instance, the Quidditch stuff.
+Eliminating the Dursley's all together was a really good move. Their part in the book was pretty dull so it was wise to just do away with them.
I could say alot more, but I'll just end by saying that these moviemakers know what they are doing. Kudos to them for making material that initially seemed incompatible with the film medium into a great, briskly paced movie.
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