The Golden Compass: Critic Reviews

The Golden Compass is a snowbound mystical-whizbang kiddie ride that hovers somewhere between the loopy and the lugubrious.

Hampered by its fealty to the book and its madly rushed pace.

It certainly looks wonderful, with epic dash and a terrific central performance from Nicole Kidman, who may come to dominate our children's nightmares.

Disappoints with its lack of character development and convoluted storytelling.

The movie simply delivers too many colorfuls for its own good, none of whom establish a true emotional identity, and thus it isn't moving, it's busy.

With all its hesitations and half-measures, The Golden Compass kindled something this critic hasn't felt in years: a burning thirst to see the sequel.

In drawing and quartering much of the novel's intent, [Screenwriter/Director] Weitz ends up with a film that feels not just unfinished but undone.

Represents the year's biggest gamble -- and it delivers the year's biggest and most ambitious fantasy.

Vagueness colors all, banishing emotional connections in the process.

Weitz's film is short, punchy and efficient, and it's full of engaging spectacle.

The carefully crafted look, in which fabulous fantasy mingles with hand-woven sweaters, offers a visual feast. The acting is impeccable from performers to voices.

Why is it so joyless?

A darker, deeper fantasy epic than the Rings trilogy, The Chronicles of Narnia or the Potter films. It springs from the same world of quasi-philosophical magic, but creates more complex villains and poses more intriguing questions.

For now, The Golden Compass can stand on its own, as a standard-issue but still glorious adventure.

An innocuous, passably entertaining effects extravaganza.

Visually, The Golden Compass is dazzling, hopscotching from hallowed halls of academe to the Nordic tundra, from luxe manors to creepy, sci-fi-like facilities. The effects couldn't be better.

The action is crisply paced, the cast is committed to playing it straight, and if the script is pulling its punches, that doesn't weaken the story's headlong energy.

A mishmash of half-baked ideas, loud special-effects and disjointed imagery.

The Golden Compass: controversial statement on free will vs. religious oppression or disjointed, hard-to-follow fantasy-action flick for kids? Let's go with the latter.

The prevailing tone is cold, which has nothing to do with the frigid settings of the second half, and the pic doesn't invite the viewer to enthusiastically enter into this new dramatic realm.

The best you can say about The Golden Compass is that it's merely the second-dullest Nicole Kidman/Daniel Craig film this year.

"Free will" and "reason" go to war with "dogma" and "blind obedience" in The Golden Compass, the cryptic and striking new film based on the fantasy novels of Philip Pullman.

With its rushed, jargon-pumped exposition, surplus of quarter-baked characters, stray narrative strands and generously dropped hints of things possibly to come, The Golden Compass is a movie that wears its franchise ambitions on its sleeve.

This year's big holiday fantasy movie, The Golden Compass, is not as charming as the Harry Potter series or as spectacular as the Lord of the Rings movies, but it has something else to offer: ideas.

This is the kind of movie that was made by throwing dollars at stuff, as opposed to using imagination, thought or even just common sense.