Stardust
starring Claire Danes, Charlie Cox, Sienna Miller, Ricky Gervais, Jason Flemyng, Mark Strong, Rupert Everett, Peter O’Toole, Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert Di Niro
screenplay by Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn
directed by Matthew Vaughn
I didn’t like this fantasy. I had high expectations because of performances by Peter O’Toole, Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert De Niro. But I think the script just lifted a lot of its material from other currently popular fantasy stories featuring witches and pirates - I mean the likes of The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Never Ending Story, and especially The Village. Watch it for yourself and you’ll see why.
I was surprised how much actress Claire Danes resembles Gwyneth Paltrow. All through the movie I thought I was watching Gwyneth Paltrow, and I only discovered the truth in the end credits. It was also in the end credits that I discovered the one outstanding reason why I did not like the movie. It is based on the novel written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Charles Vess. Aha! An illustrated novel! That means a comic book. I absolutely hate films made from comic books. I hated Batman, Superman, Spiderman, X-Men and all the rest. I watched them only enough to confirm that they were crap and I cannot understand why some people rave about them as they do. What is it about translating comic books to film that makes them so bad? Mostly, I suppose that the comic book format is so bad to begin with that any film script written on the basis of one can only be a little better than bad at most, which is another way of saying a little worse than passingly good.