The Golden Compass

I'm so sick of writing/talking/hearing about this movie and the book series that I almost don't want to write this review. Then again, it's this or study for finals... and let's be honest, who really wants to do that? I read this book series over the last couple weeks because I generally attempt to read books before I see the movies, or at least try, and also I wrote an essay about these books/movies and the controversy surrounding them, and I needed to do my own "research." (Clearly the one time I actually made a serious effort to do exhaustive research was a thinly veiled excuse to read atheistic books without being burned at the stake as a heretic.) Anyway, the point is, I really didn't like the books, when it was all said and done (that is, when the eleven-year-old "heroes" had killed God, recognized self enjoyment as the greatest goal of life, and started kissing non stop and probable having some kind of faux-sexual interactions by means of their blessed dæmons. Did I mention they were eleven?) Yeah, sorry about that, I got ahead of myself. Where was I? Oh, right, I hated the books. The heroine, Lyra, is a brat and is celebrated as such. Her greatest talent is lying (Odysseus, anyone?) and while it gets her out of several tight spots, it doesn't change the fact that she is an annoying character. Philip Pullman, the author, clearly hates God and Christianity and while I'm all for free will and freedom to think/say what you want, I couldn't help feeling sorry and depressed for this guy who writes books consumed by a misinformed hate of a religion that he perceives to be something it isn't. I'm getting off track again. The point is, I hated the books, but I had a free ticket and was just too curious to NOT see the movie, so I went, and what do you know, I hated it too. Funnily enough I hated the books and the movie for opposite reasons. While the books held your attention (for the most part) from start to finish, I disliked them because the ultimate message was depressing and, quite frankly (as a Christian), blasphemous. The filmmakers, fearing controversy I expect, dumbed down the anti-Church/anti-God themes, which are what the books are all about. If they continue making them (which I sincerely hope they don't, although am curious to see if they do) they will have to be more up front about all those themes, but they got away with castration of the underlying theme in this first movie. That is to say, they almost got away with it. They didn't remove the Roman Catholic Church- oops, I mean The Magisterium (let's get real, they're synonymous)- from the movie, they only made it less obvious that The Magisterium represents the RCC. What we, the viewers, were left with was a villain in the form of a big, controlling, corporation that is more like a caricature of 1984's Big Brother than anything else. We have the clergy and officers of the movie's Magisterium swooping around adorned with big cheesy looking golden "M"s which remind the audience of something out of an unsuccessful rap video. Hearing the characters chatter on about "Dust" and their authority and the prophecies of the witches is unintentionally humorous. It's the same way it was with the film adaptation of The DaVinci Code: what was sharp and intriguing, not to mention controversial, on the page, is dull and laughably far-fetched when we hear it coming out of the mouth of our own favorite Hollywood deities. It ought to be noted that the actors seem to give it their all. Nicole Kidman, as the series' most fascinating character, Mrs. Coulter, is phenomenal. Daniel Craig is alright, for the brief moment he's in the movie, though I have a hard time seeing him as the Lord Asriel we read about in The Amber Spyglass, only because he seems too human and not enough like a war lord. The movie's other great performance, besides Kidman's, is turned in by Sam Elliot as Lee Scoresby, the Texan Aeronaut. At first, I didn't like Dakota Blue Richards (the newcomer depicting little-miss-second-Eve, Lyra Belacqua) but by the end of the movie I decided that she was decent for a child actor, and easily a better actress in a her debut role than any of the Harry Potter trio were in The Sorcerer's Stone. Ian McKellen was oddly boring as the voice of Iorek Brynison, the armored King of the Ice Bears. Not that he wasn't trying, I just found his character tedious and disengaged. The story, which I will not go into lest I threaten the immortal souls of the three people who might actually read this review (no but really, I'm just SICK of talking about it), was rushed and disjointed, not to mention cut short at the end, sparing the audience what might have been the strongest scene in the movie. One of the most interesting elements of Pullman's books is the manifestation of the character's souls in their animal companions, called "dæmons." (Agenda?) The eyebrow-raising name aside, it is interesting how Pullman weaves these dæmons into the story, how they interact with their people, and how they interact with other people's dæmons, especially when the people are fighting, or kissing, or manipulating each other. As realistic as they looked, I felt like the movie never really got the dæmons right. The conection between Lyra and hers, Pantalaimon, was never as understood as it was in the book, and this, too, helped the movie lose its emotional weight. Something I've come to expect of my fantasy book adaptations is good music, and I found myself constantly thinking about how distinctly unimpressive the score for this movie was. Lord of the Rings has a magnificent score, and I firmly hold to the opinion that the John Williams' Harry Potter score is among the best of this past decade, but the music for this movie was not memorable except in that it was memorably unmemorable. (you understand, yes?) I will mention that the movie looks fantastic. The special effects are first rate, and the locations are superb (though for the most part, I suspect, the grandeur is thanks to the miracle of blue screens). There you have it. My opinions without breaks and without any kind of purposeful order, now you know what you might have heard had you been sitting next to me in the theater. I won't tell you what everyone in the theater heard when the credits rolled and I realized my favorite part had been cut, for it was highly inappropriate and slipped from my mouth before I had a chance to think about it. I will tell you though that I didn't go into this movie expecting to hate it. I expected it would be entertaining and subversive to Christianity (not that those two are synonymous, they are just the two strongest features of the books). Sadly, and happily, the movie was neither of those things. Happily it wasn't subversive to Christianity, not yet anyway, because the money grubbing studio execs didn't dare keep Pullman's themes intact. But sadly it wasn't entertaining either, because the money grubbing studio execs didn't dare keep Pullman's story intact. In the movie, children have their dæmons cut away from them by evil scientists in a process called intercision, and the result is that they are soulless and empty, not dead, just blank. Pullman's books are, as he said, about killing God. Well they took that out of the movies thus far, and the result is a movie that seems to have undergone its own version of intercision and the result is the same: soulless and empty. We have a few good fantasy movies to look forward to, there's the sixth and seventh Harry Potter movies on the horizon (a series which is getting progressively better and could reach a position of excellence akin to the LOTR series if it continues doing so) not to mention we have six more Narnia movies on the way. New Line Cinema obviously plans on making the entire His Dark Materials trilogy into movies, and the end of this movie sets the second up even more than the first book did the second. Be that as it may, this was a bad movie, and the majority of critics have panned it, so perhaps it won't be all that successful. Once the box office numbers start rolling in, we'll have a better idea, but for now it remains unclear whether or not there will be a movie of The Subtle Knife (the follow-up to The Golden Compass). If there is, let's hope they have the common sense to change director and screenwriter. If there isn't, good riddance to a depressing series, an unfaithful adaptation, and a whole lot more controversy than a movie this poor really deserves.

C-

Enchanted

Well, here goes nothing. Once again. I am coming off of the longest stretch of seeing almost no movies that I can ever remember. In the last four months I have seen a movie in the theaters three times. Never mind that two of those times were spent seeing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix for the fourth and fifth times at the dollar theater. We are talking about a monumental change here. I saw a movie every weekend last school year, and probably more than that last summer. Hello California, land of nine dollar matinées and immobile young students. Perhaps it's because of this LONG dry spell that I found the first new movie I saw in the theaters in four months to be pretty grand, but then again perhaps not. This is, as I often promise them to be, a very short review. I loved this movie. That's not to say that it was amazing or anything, but it was very charming and excellently cast. Amy Adams (who is my future wife, I am now convinced) is absolutely perfect in the lead role. She is as beautiful and musical a Disney Princess as we are ever likely to see, and though the temptation was undoubtedly very strong, she never once condescends to playing the role. She believes in the character wholeheartedly and, thanks to her infectious screen presence, so do we. Patrick Dempsey, otherwise known as McDreamy, is pretty good for the role he plays, as is James Marsden who after The Notebook must be getting used to playing the goodhearted, but rejected, suitor. Susan Sarandon is painted up like a cheap streetwalker, but part of that (at least) had to be in the script. The story both follows and politely pokes fun at, Disney princess formula, which is it's strength and toward the end it's only real weakness as a city-top "action-lite" scene becomes just a little too much to take. It doesn't matter at that point, because as the title suggests, we've been thoroughly enchanted and can forgive these Disney monster-makers their cheap and out-of-place little climax. Go see it as a family, go see it as a date movie, if necessary go see it by yourself, but go see it one way or the other. It's too much fun to resist.

B+