It’s not very often one says this about a movie, but at just under two hours The Golden Compass is far too short for its own good. It has the look of a Lord of the Rings style epic, and a cast that’s almost as big, but it feels like it was put together from scraps of ideas rather than built from a complete concept.
Directed by Chris Weitz (American Pie), the film tells the story of a young girl named Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards) who inherits a strange device, a Golden Compass, that helps her see the truth in any given situation. There’s a band of bad guys, lead by an impressively icy Nicole Kidman, who need the device to achieve their evil ends and, of course, a group of good guys, lead by a polar bear named Iorek Byrnison (voiced by Ian McKellen), who are determined to save her.
Like most epic movies, there are plenty of big battle scenes set in exotic locations and lots of narrow escapes for our diminutive heroine. For the adults, there is also a lot of none-too-subtle subtext of a religious nature for them to argue about on the way home.
While it has its moments of pure entertainment, such as the big polar bear battle, The Golden Compass just doesn’t have the deoth it needs to really add up to anything meaningful in the end.
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