Golden Compass, 3.5 stars
As the traditional day-before-christmas-eve-movie (going strong after eighteen years), watched Chris Weitz’s Golden Compass, the first film based on Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. I quite liked the books back in the day, and the zeppelin-equipped trailer piqued my interest even further. How did things play out in the long form?
Quite well. Even though the plot sees dilution through rampant exposition (pages of careful explanation are compressed to mere lines of dialogue) and the Magisterium remains an oddly distant threat. The scenery is pretty, but unfortunately the arctic vistas do get a bit boring when compared to the interestring steampunk imagery shown in the earlier scenes. Sadly, the avalanche of expositionary vomit begins immediately, and exposes the watchers to far more details than he’s aware in the books, cutting down the mystery significantly. Despite the anti-religious themes being watered down, several institutions have called a boycott on it.
Nicole Kidman aces her performance as the icily mysterious ms. Coulter, but is often left with very little to play with in the heavyhanded dialogue, and is left with hysteria. Daniel Craig is sadly restricted to mere minutes of screen-time, but the character of Lord Asriel didn’t merit much more in the book either. The Panzerbjörn Iorek Byrnison is voiced by Ian McKellen, and it’s indeed odd to hear him extolling a pint-sized friend to hurry across a dangerous bridge. Christopher Lee, another Lord of the Rings veteran, is featured for perhaps half a minute, but manages to exude a lot of menace in the little time he is given.
Sadly, the movie didn’t exactly excel, neither in the US box office nor in reviews, so sequels based on the two subsequent books of the trilogy are far from certain.
The extra half-star comes from the commanding presence of Lee Scoresby’s bunny-daemon. Yeah, I’m a sucker for floppy ears.
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