113 minutes of my life that I will never get back. That's nearly 2 hours I sat and watched a terrible waste of film that I am disappointed to say I have even watched it. 1 hour and 53 minutes I could have spent on more important tasks like napping or doing yard work. Ugh!
What movie am I talking about?
The Golden Compass
I'm not giving this review bad marks because of what I had heard about it previously and the Anti-Christ undertones and what-not. In fact I was so confused while watching this that the characters could have blatantly come out and said directly to me calling me by name that there was no God I probably wouldn't have noticed.
The movie was terrible. The acting was bad. The children were ugly. It all sounded like gibberish and nonsense to me and I would say I've seen/read enough Fantasy to be able to pick out a plot and follow it, but with this I just couldn't. I tried in my mind to relate the nonsense on the screen to what I know in my mind hoping to make some sense of it all and I came up empty.
Half way through the movie I stated out loud for the world to hear that "this movie is stupid and makes no sense." However John was the only one there to hear me and he paused the movie and tried to explain what was going on, but in reality I don't think he knew either. He said I needed to pay attention to the undertones and see that the government is trying to steal the children's innocence and control them as they get older.... huh? I'm sure that was there, but I just wasn't getting it.
And lets talk about trauma. Ripping a child's "demon" away and calling it a "small cut" when it was obvious that any small hurt to a demon reflected to the child. That's terrible. I think that was more traumatizing to a person watching then to see a Skeksis sucking the essence out of a Gelfling! AHH! (see The Dark Crystal as reference)
This is supposed to be based on a children's book? Then why the hell was it so confusing? I can rightly say that this is one movie I will NEVER be watching again and there was not even a spark of interest to even encourage me to read the books to make sense of it all. There is also no way I would ever pick up a sequel to this let alone ever want to pay money to see it in a theater. Philip Pullman is on my DO NOT READ list simply because I hated this movie.
Is there anything that could have redeemed this movie? Hmmmm ... Perhaps more character development. Perhaps some further explanation regarding dust and compasses and gobs for those in the world who have never read the book. Better actors. More action less stupid. Not trying to cram so much deep meaning into a stupid movie and go for entertainment value and not confused people. . . No, I think there is no redemption for this movie.
I'm just glad it was a free rental.
Next!
3 comments:
The movie wasn't as good as it could have been, but it made a good try! And that's to it's credit! They are in talks of a sequel now....
I couldn't stand it, nor could I force myself to watch the whole thing. The video game for my computer is better than the movie.
well it's a daemon actually.
Post a Comment