| Overall Grade: |
B |
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| Story: |
B |
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| Acting: |
B+ |
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| Direction: |
B- |
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| Visuals: |
B |
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Star Not So Bright, But Radiates Nice Enough
by Eric (movies profile)
Sep 21, 2007
41
of
70 people found this review helpful
Shooting Stars turning into maidens fair, clashing princes, nearly-immortal witches, and flying pirates; needless to say, Matthew Vaughn’s Stardust certainly is imaginative and quite a busy picture. In the twenty years since The Princess Bride became the new standard of the modern fairy tale (and more recently The Lord of the Rings made a market for large-scale fantasy stories), we’ve had our share of mystical worlds, odd creatures, and fascinating characters. So why does Stardust feel both new and used at the same time?
The film starts off with a prologue about a young Brit who lives in the town of Wall, which has a wall (no kidding?) that has been guarded by old men for hundreds of years. He tricks the guard, goes through the crack in the wall and ends up in an alternate world of Stormhold. There, he meets a witch’s slave and falls in love. Nine months later, there’s a baby at his step that was named Tristan. The story is Tristan’s (played by Charlie Cox), who also falls in love around 18, but this time to the pompous Victoria (Sienna Miller). One night, they watch a falling star at night and he offers to get it for her to prove his love. This, as we find out almost immediately, is easier said than done. But after a few developments, Tristan finds himself staring a pretty young girl named Yvaine (Claire Danes), who claims to be the star that fell. After the usual bickering and early tantrums, she agrees to come with him, but not by choice.
It is at this point that there’s still a chase going on for the star, the two other sides involved are a trio of aged witches led by Michelle Pfeiffer. They need the star to regenerate their youth by eating its heart. And then there’s an evil prince who also seeks the star to claim a jewel in its possession that would give him the throne; the immortality is an additional perk to him. And eventually, they find themselves onboard a flying pirate ship captained by Capt. Shakespeare (Robert DeNiro). He knows a few things about secrets (as his closet would tell you). The film is very much predictable, you know all the steps and are just seeing the sights. I knew how the movie would end even before they prematurely killed off Peter O’Toole. And if you don’t see whom young Tristan’s really going to love, you need something more than glasses.
Stardust does give us some great visuals, some funny moments, and the occasional instances of awe. But most of the film lacks irony, impact, or unpredictability (even though sometimes it thinks that it is). The movie wants to take itself just a little too seriously and refuses to give into it’s more screwball nature (there are times that I think a Monty Python moment would have been just the ticket). It does have fun and I was far more entertained here than in the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie. But what I saw was a shell of what the movie could have been with just a few things here and there.
The cast of the film is rather impressive and you can tell who the real stars are. One of the film’s weaknesses is Charlie Cox, who never seems to feel astonished at just what he’s looking at or going through. You would think that things like teleportation, magic, and a flying pirate ship would be enough to bring out the inner five-year-old in any boy. But not Tristan. He seems to be of a single mind about what he’s doing that I sometimes wondered if he would wake up years after the movie was over and realize that he’d just been on a FLYING PIRATE SHIP. Clare Danes is one of my favorite actresses and the one thing I realized in the movie is that most of what she said was really useless. She’s capable of getting emotions onto the screen without saying much. The script should have banked more on what Danes is capable of before writing out way too many monologues for a character that should be more quiet and observant. But I don’t want to think about anyone else doing Captain Shakespeare who is much more interested than Jack Sparrow in my opinion. Robert DeNiro is completely hysterical as this crusted pirate-type who never wanted to be. He plays camp like nobody does, and making a character memorable at the same time. And then there’s Michelle Pfeiffer, who take camp and elevates it to a whole new level. After seeing her in Hairspray, I knew she was capable of going over-the-top without killing it. Here, she proves it thrice-times.
I admire Matthew Vaughn’s film, though the more I think about it, the more it doesn’t hold up. But that’s the beauty of these kinds of modern fairy tales. They play in our hearts more than our heads, but that isn’t an excuse for not living up to potential. Based on Neil Gaiman’s novel, I wondered if the novel was a little more detailed, perhaps it had more back-stories. These are things that might have made Stardust a much better picture. My curiosity in Vaughn is that he makes films that seem to have a language of their own (his Layer Cake is fascinating if not great), and yet he feels the need to over explain.
All in all, Stardust is a good movie to take the kids to and you’ll have a few laughs. But you’ll realize soon after leaving the theater that the movie won’t leave you remembering characters like you did with Princess Buttercup and her Wesley, Harry Potter, or Frodo and Gandalf. But that’s okay. Some movies are just meant to be a one good-time event. Stardust might not leave memories, but it will leave a decent glow around you for a little bit. |
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