Review: The Golden Compass

Phillip Pullman's novel His Dark Materials is currently being developed into three movies corresponding with the three portions of the book. The first is The Golden Compass. Chris Weitz (About a Boy) directs the likes of Daniel Craig, Nicole Kidman, and others in this sci-fi/fantasy adventure about a parallel universe where people's souls live alongside human bodies in the form of spiritual animals called Daemons.

To be perfectly honest, The Golden Compass seems to be another way to capitalize on youthful audiences, and I'm sure that more youthful audiences appreciate the movie more than I did. The IMDb user rating details show that females under the age of eighteen gave the highest average rating for the movie, tied with females over forty-five. It's hard to say whether this means anything. Typically (personal observation), the ratings given on IMDb by young women tend to skyrocket higher than any other age/gender group.

I will say that the CGI in the film is rather exceptional. I was concerned about having realistic-ish animals talking. I generally hate movies where this is a major feature. No worries here. The problems with the movie come from other areas.

Though I've never read Pullman's novel, I get the feeling from the movie that it is far more immersive than the film. The film sets up an entire world's back story in a matter of ninety seconds. By assuming that the audience will buy into the fantasy aspects of the story simply by labeling the movie "fantasy," the filmmakers make a horrible mistake. I would have preferred an additional twenty to thirty minutes if it made the rest of the movie more enjoyable. I think it is this detriment that contributes the most to my lack of interest that followed.

As far as the cast is concerned, I think Nicole Kidman was probably the best-cast of the movie, though she seems somehow uninspired. Dakota Blue Richards, who plays the primary character Lyra, is decent for a child actor, though it's obvious she can't cry on command, which contributes poorly to a scene near the climax. I don't want to be too hard on her though. She's very young, and the script didn't allow for much character development. In fact, all the characters are rather wooden and flat.

The camerawork didn't impress me. When I watch an epic movie, I expect to see sweeping images that dazzle my eyes, or at the very least something creative. The Golden Compass is a photocopy of a cinematography textbook. And when most of a movie is made by a computer, you have free reign over the way it looks. This goes back to the idea that it's just there to follow a string of successful like-styled movies.

All-in-all, the movie's alright. It's watchable. I'm glad I saw it at the movies with my wife because if this were on DVD, I would have turned it off or walked away after half an hour. If that had happened, I would have misssed the only interesting point in the entire movie. There's a spot of brutality about an hour and a half through that absolutely floored me. It caught me by surprise. I won't mention here what it is because if you're gonna see this scene, you're gonna have to sit through the same forced "speeches for the sake of having speeches" that I did. Overall, this gets a boring 5/10.