It’s hard to believe that we’re a full six movies into the Harry Potter film franchise. Actors who were 11 years old at the start of the series have now hit 20 and it’s very weird to think that we’ve watched them grow up on screen through these iconic characters. The films have brought in almost $5 billion worldwide thus far, an absurd figure that is sure to grow pretty substantially with the release of Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince. Not only should the movie score big with ravenous fans because they have been waiting two years for the next chapter in the cinematic Harry Potter adventurers, but they should also be quite pleased by the fact that this is one of the best movies the series has spat out so far.

Plot descriptions for Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince are pretty well useless. For one thing it’s a sprawling tale with too many characters to condense down to a reasonable length, for another we’re talking about part 6 in an ongoing narrative that would requite way too much backstory to set up. Let’s just leave it with the “chosen one” Harry Potter is one step closer to battling the ultimate evil wizard badass Voldemort and one year further along in continuing his magic education at the Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft and Wizardry. That’ll do.

The progressive move into darkness that began in the third film almost reaches its zenith in this film. We’re no longer in the “golly gee, ain’t magic cool?” world that Home Alone helmer Chris Columbus created in 2001, but deep into a battle between the forces of good and evil. Major characters die in this outing and the outlook at the end is not particularly hopeful. This is an Empire Strikes Back-style chapter in the Harry Potter series as the forces of evil make a few power plays and set up the final battle. It’s a dark and brooding tale punctuated by the moments of gentle character comedy that have been crucial to the series, The hormonal Hogwarts teens start the whole dating thing and giggles ensue.

The balance between darkness and comedy works quite well in this chapter and while the massive book has been necessarily truncated in the transition to the screen, the narrative structure works quite well. In the past, a few of the Harry Potter outings have suffered from episodic and terribly condensed scripts that sacrificed narrative flow in favor of cramming as many scenes from the book verbatim as possible. Fortunately screenwriter Steve Kloves (The Fabulous Baker Boys, Wonderboys) has returned to the franchise. He took the last movie off after cranking out four Harry Potter adaptations in a row and it’s no coincidence that the one he didn’t write had the weakest script of the series. Kloves is the best at carving up Rowling’s words and condensing the story to fit a movie narrative, but you have to worry about direct-translation overkill being a problem next time out since the producers have decided to split the final book Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows into two movies (Although I think we can assume this was done to milk the teat of the Harry Potter cashcow one extra time as much as it was done to stay true to the book).