Played out on a vast sometimes overcrowded canvas, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" (Warner Bros.) is a richly textured adventure narrative in which good and evil are clearly delineated, but characters present a range of moral shading.

As they did in the franchise's earlier films, magical elements in this sixth adaptation of J.K. Rowling's hugely popular fantasy novel series serve merely as props in a study of loyalty, friendship and the varied human responses to temptation. Unlike the moral lessons on display, these spells and potions are not intended to have any more application to real life than the flying monkeys in "The Wizard of Oz."

Instead, the basis of the story continues to be the struggle between a now-teenage Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and the forces of darkness known as the Death Eaters whose leader, Lord Voldemort, murdered Harry's parents while he was still an infant.