Stardust: Review By Dan

Release Date: August 10th, 2007

Directed By: Matthew Vaughn

Cast: Charlie Cox, Claire Danes, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert DeNiro, Sienna Miller, Mark Strong, Peter O' Toole

Epic Narration By: Ian McKellen.

I'll start by probably angering a few folks, but I was never the biggest fan of The Princess Bride. I give it it's due respect because of it's wide appeal and it's status as a classic, but I don't attribute the same level of greatness to it as others do. Why do I bring up that movie, when this review is about Stardust? Because they seem to be in that same class, of medieval fantasy/comedy, and have similar themes, only Stardust is infinitely more appealing. Though hearing the lines "Inconceivable!" and "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." is funny the first couple times, after a while it just became grating to me, like beating a dead horse. Stardust doesn't suffer repeat jokes such as those, and it is for the better. Honestly, this was easily the hidden gem of summer 2007, and I'm thoroughly surprised it's not talked about more often.

Adapted from acclaimed author Neil Gaiman's novel of the same name, Stardust manages to avoid becoming overly sappy at any given time, in thanks to Vaughn's comedic timing. I began watching this film expecting to feel my eyelids starting to feel like a million pounds and becoming drowsy the way I did from Princess Bride (a heterosexual male can only take so much obnoxiously cornball romance before being lulled to sleep). Thankfully, this never occurred, as the moments that the inevitable sap does occur, they are inundated and cut short by constant humor (such as the dead princes who simply watch how the events unfold in the story, injecting their sarcasm at the right times, or people being turned into goats or goats turned into people, but still acting like goats). So, in other words, Stardust treads that line between appealing to lovesick girls and heterosexual guys just fine, a feat I didn't agree that Bride did as well.

Though it's always good to see Michelle Pfeiffer in anything (she still has my heart with her portrayal of Catwoman, and she's definitely a milf), she plays the evil witch Lamia wonderfully, the actor who really surprised me had to be Robert DeNiro. I've grown up with this image of DeNiro as this hard ass, take no sh*t kind of guy (Goodfellas, Casino, Raging Bull, Godfather Part II, etc), and it's laugh out loud inducing to see him playing the gay sky pirate Captain Shakespeare. It goes against everything I've come to expect from the guy, and I loved that. He's taken a lot of forgettable, downright loathsome roles this past decade (looking at you, Meet the Parents trilogy), but Stardust was a great example of him playing against type and obviously having a ball doing so. I don't believe we'll ever see a cross dressing, queer dancing DeNiro ever again, so kudos to Vaughn getting that out of him. It's interesting how Vaughn manages to get memorable roles out of DeNiro and Nicolas Cage (Kick-Ass), and it frustrates me at the same time, because it proves they are much more capable then the dreck they've both been in in the past 10 or so years.

Our lovelorn hero, Tristan (Cox) and star turned literal human Yvaine (Danes) also had better chemistry then I thought they would. The last time I saw Claire Danes in something was Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, and while I loved the final 20 minutes of that film, everything before that was mediocre and too silly for a Terminator film, so it left a somewhat negative impression of her in my mind. But, she redeems herself here, as she gives Tristan a hard time throughout instead of acting like a lovesick puppy, and I appreciated the bonding sequence they had aboard Shakespeare's flying pirate ship (where they literally try to capture lightning in a bottle :P). Though I'm not familiar with Cox's work, his transformation from bumbling but earnest fool to dashing, skilled hero was believable enough.

And surprisingly, the special effects are quite decent. Whenever Lamia casts a spell on someone or something, you can see that $70 million budget at work. While a lot of hocus pocus is used, *spoiler* I felt the stand out sequence had to be a reanimated Mark Strong being controlled by Pfeiffer, fighting Charlie Cox. Not only was it an inventive battle, but it's laced with great humor as Strong's brothers (and himself), watch from the afterlife, reacting to the fight. I've always found voodoo to be creepy stuff, and that was quite the treat. There were plenty of other moments that had me laughing and thinking "what the f*ck, haha" such as when a man is transformed into a woman, but when he speaks, he still has that male voice, or another person's voice changed to a bird's. It sounds stupid, I know, but in the context of the film, it's brilliant with it's timing.

Not an Oscar winning feature by any means, but one should not overlook this well paced, memorable little film. It's charming enough to keep your undivided attention for it's barely over 2 hour runtime, and I'm willing to bet you'll walk away from it more satisfied then you might have previously believed. Underrated? Most definitely.

Grade: B+