STARDUST
Time for another movie review. Tuesday night, George, Parris, Janice Gelb and Stephen Boucher (our friends from Australia), Carl and I headed off to see Stardust. I ended up liking this movie a lot, and, in fact, I’d like to see it again. Which is the hightest compliment I can pay a movie. I very, very rarely want to go again.
Initially I was pretty worried. First, it had a voice over, which is often a bad sign. It also got started very slowly. It wasn’t that I would have cut out any of the opening scenes, but they just went on for a very long time. Yes, I get it, he’s in love with a mean girl, he has big dreams, so let’s get on with it. I also thought the beginning was rather muddled with witches and brothers fighting for a throne, and lovesick young men, and a sassy star. Then halfway through the movie — about the time Rober di Niro came mincing onto the screen it started to win me over.
And by the end I was charmed and joined in the applause because they brought all the threads to a very satisfying braided conclusion. There were no surprises in this movie, but they did it very well and I ended up liking the characters — even the villains.
One thing that did bug me right to the end was the mixing of language styles. At times the film was very Victorian, and then suddenly our hero would be delivering a line like “Oh, get over yourself.” That kind of anachronism was jarring and would jerk me right out of the movie and the moment. Overall I would say Stardust is a lovely couple of hours.
Melinda
August 16th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
Agreed. We saw it with John and Gail, and really liked it too. More than they did, in fact.
It’s not a fantasy-adventure movie. It’s unapologetically a fairy tale, and has to be taken on that level.
Loved de Niro, and I thought that the evil Prince was done very well.
And there were some lovely touches, like the inn called “The Slaughtered Prince”.