Description

Few films have been more hyped than this one. With New Line Cinema having exhausted The Lord of the Rings, this was seen as an obvious new cash cow. Is it all that good? No, not really. It's not BAD, but...

Well, for a start it's a pale shadow of the book. The menace of the Church was always bound to get toned down for American audiences (they don't like being told there's something sinister about the clergy. Dear me, no) but also the richness of the book's language disappears and that just leaves a rushed version of the plot, which is frankly a bit barmy.

The mere fact that they've gone formore… the rather direct and boring American title The Golden Compass, rather than the UK's more evocative and mysterious Northern Lights tells you something. You might have thought that Tom Stoppard adapting the screenplay would guarantee success, but good playwrights don't necessarily make good screenwriters (one glance at Harold Pinter's shambolic fiasco Sleuth can tell you that).

My other problem is that it takes itself way too seriously. Whereas Harry Potter and even, to a lesser extent, Lord of the Rings and Narnia (the latter being something Philip Pullman particularly hates, which is perfectly understandable, though it's a shame this ends up looking so much like it) had distinct moments of comedy, this has none. You're not supposed to find Roger the Kitchen Boy or the fact that the villains of the piece are called The Gobblers remotely amusing though, in the absence of any other humour, it's hard not to.

So what's left? Heavy-handed symbolism about souls, loss of innocence, repression, knowledge being power etc. and some polar bears who talk like Magneto and Lovejoy (did someone just decide that if you happened to be called Ian McSomething, you'd be the ideal voice for a polar bear?).

And even the polar bears are a bit rubbish.

Cast list

---

Info:

Category:

Movies > Films

Case Type:

Blu-ray Disc

Release Type:

Retail

Language:

English

Region:

B/2

Format:

Widescreen

Comments:

1    read    add

---

Cover Info:

Title:

The Golden Compass (2007) WS B/2 Retail Blu-ray Disc

Part:

CD 2

Dimensions:

1395 x 1402 px

Size:

557 KB

Downloads:

46 (0 today)

Uploaded:

Report a Problem Wrong Cover Duplicate Image Bad Quality Wrong Info

06/05/08 by Sarge!

Quality Rating:

• Currently /5 Stars.
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5

Cover not yet rated. Click CDs to vote!

---

Other Available Parts: