I'll try to do this without spoiling things. But I won't make any guarantees. Spoilers will be saved for below the break.

We went to see Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince with several friends at midnight last night. I enjoyed the movie, but I feel there were several missed opportunies and "What the hell?" moments.

Things that I felt were missing entirely (I may revise this as I think of them):

Bill Weasley and Fleur
Any of the three Ministers
The Gaunts
Kreacher and Dobby
The Dursleys (I was ok with this, and liked the replacement)

Things that were under-done:

Romilda Vane
the Advanced Potionmaking book
The private lessons
Ginny's relationship with Dean Thomas

Things that came out of left field:

The Christmas Scene

Without going into details, I'm most disturbed by the christmas scene. It has no basis in the books, replaced an interesting scene that I would have liked to seen, and didn't really advance the plot, unless it's setting up a retooling of the story in the final two movies.

That said, there were several moments that I feel they handled very well:

The love potion
The cave (mostly)
The climax of the story (While slightly off, was still well done, and easier to pull off than the book's version)

Beware, below here, ye be entering spoiler lands.
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