There’s a ton of seasoned talent, both on screen and in voiceovers, but the plot is thick, fast and the motivation so contrived.
By Bob Brown
First, a warning: Some parents may take small children to this movie, mistaking it for an appropriate seasonal entertainment. They may be surprised. The film has quite enough scary creatures and violent confrontations, albeit digitized, to traumatize toddlers. The appropriate age group is about 12 to 13. It may be too complicated for those much younger, and too simplistic to interest those much older. Parents will find the material tedious. But that’s another matter.
The story on which this feature is based is by a onetime teacher, and a teacher’s teacher, Philip Pullman. He’s Oxford educated, self-effacing and quite interested in spinning stories that stir the imagination, rather than feed the intellect. Sometimes, kids just want to relax. “When people ask me what I meant by this story, or what was the message I was trying to convey in that one,” Pullman says on his Web site, “I have to explain that I’m not going to explain. Anyway, I’m not in the message business; I’m in the ‘Once upon a time’ business.”
This production is from Pullman’s Carnegie Medal-winning novel The Northern Lights (1995), the first book of a trilogy, His Dark Materials. Despite Pullman’s disingenuous disclaimer about meanings, the tale is based on a certain worldview. That is, organized religion is a crock, and any attempt by the state to legislate on behalf of religion is tantamount to bringing in the thought police. “The trouble is that all too often in human history,” Pullman says on his Web site, “churches and priesthoods have set themselves up to rule people’s lives in the name of some invisible god (and they’re all invisible, because they don’t exist) — and done terrible damage.” Think of this film as the Anti-Narnia. Ironically, director Chris Weitz, who also adapted the book for the screenplay, wanted no mention of religion in the movie.
The story is set in a parallel universe, a quasi-Oxford, where we find 12-year-old Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards) and her personal daemon, Pantalaimon (the voice of Freddie Hightower). In fact, everyone in this world is shadowed by an animal daemon instead of possessing an interior soul. Youngsters’ daemons will change shape and form until they settle into adulthood. Pantalaimon is variously a ferret, a cat, or a mouse, depending on the mood.
Her uncle, Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig), a scholar of Jordan College, has just lectured on his discoveries about the origins of the otherworldly “dust,” putting his life in jeopardy with the fascistic authorities of the state, who are trying to control all independent thought and action. Curious to discover the secret of the dust, and to visit the northern regions, home of ice bears, Lyra is eager to join the mysterious and beautiful Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman), who has invited her on a northern journey to see for herself. To help her, the Master of Jordan College (Jack Shepherd) secretly slips Lyra a unique compass to divine the truth, an Alethiometer.
But Coulter is not as she first appears, and is in league with the General Oblation Board, the evil Gobblers, who are suspected of stealing children away and separating them from their daemons. With the compass on her side, Lyra discovers her peril and runs away. Then begins a quest to find her lost friends, releasing them if she can. She picks up assistance, in the form of a clan called the Gyptians, and a dirigible pilot, the cowboy Lee Scoresby (Sam Elliott), as well as a downtrodden ice bear, Iorek Byrnison (voiced by Sir Ian McKellen). Keeping track of the multi-layered mythology will be a chore in the 113-minute running time.
There’s a ton of seasoned talent, both on screen and in voiceovers. But the plot is so thick and fast, and the motivation so contrived, Richards has her hands full trying not to overact. Her fellow kids are likewise overburdened. No way anyone can look natural when they have to gesture toward unseen digital characters against a blue screen. But that’s the nature of filmed fantasy today. Many of the boatload of phantasmical tales being offered could not have been filmed before the perfection of digital techniques.
Much of the landscape scenery is filmed in picturesque locations: The streets of old Bergen, Norway; Grindewald, Switzerland; and exterior and interior environs of Oxford. But none of the actors got to travel, since the backdrops were just that.
The more power that computer animation commands, the more life gets sucked out of the story telling. Whatever happened to curling up in a cozy chair, flipping the pages and conjuring up the images in your own head? Talk about thought control.
Rated PG-13 for sequences of fantasy violence.

