The Golden …ass
I saw The Golden Compass this past weekend and it sucked pretty bad if you ask me. I can see where it would make for a good book, and there were some interesting things in the movie here and there, but for the most part, the movie was formulaic and cliche in almost every way possible. To top it off, it was boring, and was pretty much devoid of any imagination, and even the concepts that were interesting in theory had such poor execution that the point of it was lost. The movie really led me to believe that the only way you could really enjoy it is if you were either extremely young, extremely inexperienced in or apathetic towards the majesty of cinema, or someone who has read the book. It took far far too long to get started, and it was pretty quick and anti-climactic to finish. I can see how it would be difficult to make a movie out of the kind of story it was, but the problems really went beyond an inability to convey significant details in precious little time. In fact I felt that the movie did tell a surprising amount of information despite keeping the audience uninterested and unaware of it.
Also, what’s up with the slew of uglies in the movie? Outside of Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, roughly every character looked so damn ugly, it hurt. I was actually getting annoyed having to look at the main character’s teeth every time she decided to be a bratty loud mouth, which is roughly 99% of the movie. It’s mind boggling really, I can imagine not-so-great-looking adults, but cute and adorable kids? For real these have to be a dime-a-dozen. I can’t remember the last time I saw a kid that I thought was ugly. I think they were really banking on the fact that her first name was Dakota and people liked that dumbass Dakota Flanning. When exactly did loud-mouthed asshole kids become so popular anyway? Hmm, maybe they were always popular and I just grew up.
It’s a shame that this movie will probably make more money than Stardust, which is a far superior, and in fact a fantastic fantasy movie. I’m reading some of the reviews for this movie on Rotten Tomatoes and seriously, some of the writers of these positive reviews just had to have been “bribed.” Most of the negative reviews are hilariously right-on though.
4 comments December 10th, 2007 by Anuj
