Film: Stardust

Directed by: Matthew Vaughn

Year: 2007

Written by: Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn Novel: Neil Gaiman

Starring: Charlie Cox, Claire Danes, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert De Niro, Sienna Miller, Peter O'Toole

Language: English

Running Time: 128 minutes

Reviewed by: The Zombieslayer

So, Hollywood releases a mediocre adaptation of another Neil Gaiman novella. Surprise, surprise. As much as I love the genre, Hollywood rarely can pull it off.

It's 19th Century England in a small town called Wall, which is called Wall because there's a wall that supposedly is a portal to another world called
Faerie. Dunstan Thorne, a young man too curious for his own good, tricks the guardian of the wall and crosses into Faerie.

There, Dunstan falls in love at first sight with a slave named Una. He then returns to Wall, never again being able to return to Faerie. Nine months later, he finds a baby at his doorstep.

Dunstan raises that child, Tristan, and Tristan turns out to be a major dork. It is Tristan who is the protagonist of the movie, and we watch him repeat his father's crossing of the wall.

Several other side stories also go on and I'm not going to go into detail for each one, but only two side characters stand out - Michelle Pfeiffer's evil witch character, who is evil and sexy at the same time, and Robert De Niro's character, who is a little bit more complex than the one dimensional person he pretends to be.

The other characters fail to keep my interest. At best, they're a quick giggle, but nothing more. At worst, they're forgettable.

Overall, the movie is only slightly charming and slightly magical. It's missing something. I can't put my finger on what it's missing, but it was moderately cute, and that's it. Nice sets, not bad acting, but the storyline was just cute, and that's it. It's not memorable and I won't be in a hurry to buy the DVD, even though you all know how much I love this genre.

It's not a bad movie, don't get me wrong. It's just not good. At least it's better than Eragon, but that's not saying much.

Come on, Hollywood. You can make a better fantasy movie than this.