One of 2007’s most anticipated — or at least most hyped — releases turns out to be one of its most disappointing. “Golden Compass” is a tarnished adaptation of “Northern Lights,” the first novel in Philip Pullman’s cult favorite “His Dark Materials” trilogy. A boondoggle supposedly costing New Line Cinema upward of an astronomical $200 million, the downbeat good-versus-evil epic fantasy sinks under the esoterica of its convoluted imaginary conventions and fails to engage despite some intricate computer-generated imagery.
The ongoing “Harry Potter” movie series also continues to face a complicated make-believe protocol and sometimes overwhelming special effects. But it still maintains charm and whimsy thanks to its lovable characters — especially Daniel Radcliffe’s title protagonist — and the underlying warmth between them.
No such luck for the chilly “Compass,” directed and scripted by the unlikely Chris Weitz (“American Pie,” “About a Boy”). It follows orphaned 12-year-old Lyra Belacqua (the charisma-challenged newcomer Dakota Blue Richards) who has the ability to interpret a magical, truth-revealing “alethiometer” device. Her mission becomes to save lower-class children from an evil plot to kidnap then violate their basic nature, to stop the nasty Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman as a serviceable bully) in charge of the nefarious program, to redeem her insubordinate uncle, Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig), and to thwart the sinister ruling oligarchy — called the “Magisterium’”— behind all the bad stuff in Lyra’s world.
Even if it plays with lesseffect on the big screen, you can see why the narrative’s alternate realm has fascinated Pullman’s readers. In it, people’s souls live outside their bodies in the form of various animals called “daemons.” It’s a place that looks something like Europe in the 1930s where armored warrior “ice bears” talk (with one voiced by Ian McKellen) and witches are good guys. A phenomenon called “dust” becomes the big bugaboo of the plot. The Magisterium wants to stop these sparkly, powerful intergalactic particles from coming in and liberating the population from its mind control.
The “His Dark Materials” has been interpreted as an atheist tract. But the allegory of the Magisterium is stripped of overt religious symbolism for the movie. The dictatorship here could just as easily represent communism or fascism as it could, for example, the Catholic papal hierarchy or Islamic fundamentalism.
It wouldn’t surprise me if New Line was intentionally fueling the current media controversy over this issue in order to somehow drum up business for a would-be family film that is too unrelentingly dark for smaller children and too fantastical to be of broad interest to adults.
It also has an annoyingly unsatisfying and presumptive ending that assumes there will be a sequel. That makes this “Compass” way off course.
‘Golden Compass’
**
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Dakota Blue Richards
Director: Chris Weitz
