The latest mention of the film in a thread here seems to be pretty old (see? I searched!), so I'm just wondering if it's worth shelling $5204374306984327 or howevermuch a movie ticket is these days.
I'd never even heard of the film before, but ever since they hired the Vatican as their PR firm, I've been intrigued.
I'm also intrigued by the idea of Nicole Kidman doing a film that's in pretty clear opposition to her past as a Scientolonut.
And, I'm also intrigued by the idea of Nicole Kidman, period.
If you haven't read the books, you still won't like it.
It pretty much aviods any of the real issues or controversies, rushes through the storyline, and ties everything in a nice artificial bow (that didn't exist in the book).
And although Nicole Kidman does well as a pretty but evil character, she should have had black hair for this film.
But that's just me--and anyone else I've spoken to who has seen the movie.
I thought it was really, really awful. The direction, the screenplay, the acting, the editing, the soundtrack, just terrible from top to bottom. The special effects were mostly pretty good, if unimaginative. I've talked to some people who thought it was passably mediocre, though.
It looks really beautiful and the cast is great, but you need to read the book if you're looking for substance... or the complete storyline. The movie ended prematurely and just ignored the last chapter of the book, which was the most revealing and dramatic part of the whole story. Nuts!
It was quite a bit different from the book, and much more so than can be simply written off as "it's a movie, some changes are inevitable." I don't mean just plot points, either; but also the overall look and feel, which no one I've spoken with felt matched the world presented by the books.
Also, it desperately needed to be at least an hour longer. Or, at the very least, some things that were present should have been cut in order to make room for more important parts. There were too many rushed sequences, as well as points that were wholly skipped over or left unexplained; and many explanatory bits that were present were presented as brief violent spews of explain-it-all dialogue, rather than actually using the medium to show or explain things to the viewer in a reasonable (and interesting) fashion.
Some of the effects were reasonably cool (although, critically, the too-often-repeated alethiometer sequence was not one of them). I guess that some of the acting was all right, too, although honestly I do not recall any particular performances standing out. (The most memorable bit for me was the scene where Lyra and Pan were making faces, and Pan stuck out his tiny little ermine tongue at her. That was cute. It was probably, though, not what the makers had intended to be the Most Memorable Scene of the Film.)
Overall, I would rate it as a "Perfectly Good, If Someone Else is Paying" film; but I wouldn't endorse actually going to see it if you have to shell out for a full-price evening cinema ticket yourself.
I am holding out a vague hope that perhaps there is some Super Extended Director's Cut DVD Version coming out that will fix at least some of these problems. (I don't have any idea whether such a thing is planned, though; for now, it is just an idle dream.)
llouys
Brazil
August 2003
DEC 20, 2007 10:10 PM