No Hogwash: Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson Jaap Buitendijk/WB

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Rating: 3/5

Cert: 12A, 153min

Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Jim Broadbent

Usually, reviewing a Harry Potter film is like reviewing an apple. Is it an apple? Yes, it is. It’s green. You can eat it. It tastes of apple.

They’re not so much film adaptations of the books, as computer-game takes: new term at Hogwarts, new interesting character, fight with a baddie, progress to the next level, top up your puberty points, wait two years until next level loads, press “Go”.

Well, now we’ve got the ­bonus level: Harry Potter and the Never-ending Kiss Chase.

Everyone is lusting after everyone else in The Half-Blood Prince, and those who aren’t had better find someone quick. Harry (Radcliffe) is lusting ­after Ron’s (Grint) sister Ginny, but Ginny is too busy snogging someone else to notice. Ron, meanwhile, is lusting after Hermione (Watson), but he’s too busy snogging the annoying ­Lavender to do anything about it. And Hermione isn’t snogging anyone, but makes up for this by being chased by jock Cormac, lusting after Ron, and having the entire audience lust after her.

Filler? Sure. But it’s fun, ­diverting, and done with just the right mix of charm and awkwardness by returning screenwriter Steve Kloves (­despite their advancing ages, there’s no suggestion at ­anything other than some very chaste light snogging – no wonder the Pope’s a fan).

Kloves adapted all the P­otter films save Order of the Phoenix, and his task is becoming increasingly similar to stuffing a hot-air balloon into a backpack, with JK Rowling’s progressively weighty and baggy books. Half-Blood Prince clocked in at 607 pages and would, I’m pretty sure, cause one of the earth’s ­tectonic plates to flip like a pancake should you drop it.

That he’s made an engaging film out of this is to his eternal credit, though at 153 minutes, it’s still a good half-hour too long.

Jim Broadbent, whom no one is snogging or lusting after, brings the only genuine plot to proceedings: a former Hogwarts professor, he’s brought back by Dumbledore so that Harry can tease out the dark-magic secret he once ­imparted to Voldemort – we’re guessing waterboarding is out at Hogwarts.

Director David Yates brings a typically steady hand to all this, not least in an impressive Lord of the Rings-esque finale. But, the occasional set-piece aside (watch out for the ­Dementors trashing the ­Millennium Bridge), it’s hard to see this as little more than a set-up film for the two-part finale, The Deathly Hallows.

And perhaps that’s the only problem: when the plot gives room for nuance, the kids are often embarrassed by the elder thesps who do nuance better.

Radcliffe in ­particular struggles. In the early Potter films, he had cuteness, which is blank canvas for us to project onto. At 19, he’s just blank. If he’s “the one”, he’s a very bland one indeed.

“In the end,” he’s told by Dumbledore of the dark forces, “Their greatest weapon is you.”

Doesn’t bode well, does it?