Golden Compass - Review

With a weak crop of big summer movies in recent years the smart money has increas-ingly been on a growing market of winter blockbusters, writes Andrew Streat.

Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter both took advantage of a pre-Christmas thirst for adventure. And, while there was a bit of a lull last year, the festive buzz has now returned with The Golden Compass (12A), an adaptation of Northern Lights, the first in Philip Pullman's acclaimed dark fantasy trilogy.

It has all the right ingredients for a gripping, otherworldly yarn: a young girl in peril, sent on a quest to icy northern climes in search of her explorer uncle and a mysterious cosmic dust; a land inhabited by armoured bears, witches and a sinister experiment centre.

Pullman's world is set in an alternative universe, starting at an Oxford University slightly removed from our own. Young girl Lyra (Dakota Blue
Richards) is an orphan taken under the wing of the dons, including her uncle Asriel (Daniel Craig). In this world each character has his or her own 'daemon', a physical manifestation of their soul which takes the form of an animal.

Lyra learns her uncle has discovered a gateway into other worlds through the cosmic dust in the north, a fact of grave concern to the shadowy religious figures of The Magisterium. There is further danger in the form of the mysterious child-snatching 'gobbler' and the slinky, glamorous figure of Mrs Coulter (Nicole Kidman).

The daemons, along with the golden compass of the title (a device which can find the truth), is one of Pullman's various ingenious concepts. The main feat here is condensing pages of such imaginative detail into two hours. But while it's mostly faithful to the story, there's something missing from The Golden Compass.

Its two main problems are its two untested main players. It seems harsh to pick out a young newcomer as a fault, but the 13-year-old Richards just doesn't quite cut it as Lyra.
She looks the role ­ part Victorian doll, part bolshy teenager ­ and can act reasonably. But she has to manage an awful lot of screentime by herself and it's rather too much for her sparrow-like shoulders to bear.

Meanwhile American Pie writer-director Chris Weitz was always an odd choice at the helm. He does a competent, but pedestrian job of bringing this world to life. Bar the odd ropey effect, the film looks good: part imperial Britain, part art deco New York, with influences including The Wizard of Oz and 1984. But a great supporting cast, not least Craig and Kidman, is squandered.

There are no half-measures with fantasy, as Peter Jackson proved with his monumental Rings films. What's needed for the next instalment here is a director to match the vision of the books.