The Golden Compass

The Golden Compass is another soulless digital orgy with self-serving, over-the-top acting performances. It most reminded me of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Stunning set designs, great effects, a dozen stars, but a story that has no chance of engaging the audience. And why does Daniel Craig dominate the poster? By the way, the music is rather mediocre; Alexandre Desplat is great with atmospheric, emotional music, but adventurous grandiosity is not his strong suite. (12/06/2007)

It really inspires respect when someone fails to make use of a high budget, a good story and an excellent cast. But Weitz is like a landowner's vain son, scattering his father's millions with girls of poor repute. The shady visual stinks of plastic and crayons, the pace of the film is terribly unbalanced and is constantly knee-deep in explanatory notes, and the acting stars are killed by failed directing. Yes, the kids are cute (like from a chocolate commercial), Kidman has charm (kind of like 150 similar sweet witches), the appearances by a bearded Bond and the cheerful cowboy from The Big Lebowski makes one happy, but solely because these guys have charisma regardless of the botched project. Weitz is reminiscent of a ninny who peeked at Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings before filming and then tried to do something similar. But this is a very poor substitute, given that there is nothing interesting in the entire film except digital messiness. Perhaps only occasional stirrings of sympathy for familiar voices and faces. Don't give this guy big budgets anymore - he's not even able to look after his own domain: dialogues and directing characters. (11/26/2009)

Armored bear fights, flying wild sheep remembering brawls with sailors or kindly ladies with sadistic tendencies - that was too strong of a coffee and surprisingly boring at first. But when I accepted a year later that Compass won't unveil a magical fantasy, everything turned out much better in the end. I just start to regret that we won't see the continuation. The war with Azriel in the main role could have been a spectacular spectacle and a step in the right direction. (02/15/2008)

I know that objectively speaking this movie probably does not deserve that one star, but since I am so disgusted by this movie, l am going to take the liberty of rating it subjectively for once and award it the one star rating for Dakota Blue Richards, who was the only asset to this movie and managed to portray the character of Lyra mostly successfully. I have never been particularly opposed to changes in adapting books to the screen, so long as they make sense, are not arbitrary, and are beneficial to the movie. However, what the screenwriter and probably the producers have done here is downright worth a few hard slaps. To turn such a promising book series, which becomes more sophisticated and more thought-provoking with each installment, into an utterly pointless mishmash, which is clearly aimed at children and where a bunch of interesting ideas are buried or desperately underdeveloped – it is not worth anything but a good smack in the face. Especially the idea of the soul dwelling outside the body in the form of an animal – a daemon – is presented in a completely tragic way, the pace of the movie is downright deathly slow, most of the actors just recite their lines idly, the nonsensical changes compared to the original (why did they cut it off so awkwardly at the end?) and the already rather truncated plot is just tedious. No, I had better not go on listing everything that was wrong here, because it would go on for days. (08/17/2008)

I can imagine that the book can be interesting, that it would catch my attention, but this movie was simply one big disappointment. The effects are quite well done and it's clear that the creators had fun with it, but overall the story is presented so unbelievably dull that it didn't entertain me at all, and I didn't care who famous was playing there. It's a shame, but maybe I will give the book a chance someday. (04/07/2015)

Qualitatively somewhere between The Chronicles of Narnia (I've only seen one) and Stardust, though it still falls far short of Vaughn's film – maybe even father than Bolvangar. Aside from a slight political touch in the skeleton of the story, there's not really much to review – on a $180 million budget, the effects will simply be aesthetically pleasing, the exteriors will shine, and the sound will be properly punchy and epic at "key moments" (in contrast to the bland and flavorless soundtrack). The comparison here is more about how that Matthew Vaughn guy actually managed to make the wonderfully epic, funny, and much better-rated Stardust on a budget lower than $100 million. The problem with The Golden Compass may also be in its use of acting potential – the film is 80% percent based on Dakota Blue Richards, who is admittedly excellent in her child role, but the few minutes of screen presence for big names like Daniel Craig, Nicole Kidman (okay, she's the only one with a bit more space), Christopher Lee, and Ian McKellen is striking and inevitably makes you feel that their involvement was merely a (though clearly well calculated) marketing ploy. I won't deny that I also took the film home because of its proclaimed "star-studded" cast, but in that respect The Golden Compass disappointed me. The use of the potential of the "small characters" in Stardust (e.g. Ricky Gervais), the amount of space given to the ace actors, and the overall likeable, funny, yet completely professional execution made a much better and more enjoyable impression on me. In fact, Chris Weitz has "succeeded" with The Golden Compass with the opposite of what Matthew Vaughn did so brilliantly in Stardust. In this case, I'd call it a pointless odyssey that arrives at a final state where a lot of money made a little music (which is the exact opposite of Stardust). The third star was saved by a few nice touching moments, and that's only because I'm an overly sensitive soul :)) (04/30/2012)