The Golden Compass Review

By Kimberly Sabat

I don’t get what all the religious leaders are all worked up about with this movie. The same thing happened when HARRY POTTER came out. I guess getting kids to read nowadays isn’t cool, since movies like this and CHRONICLES OF NARNIA have sparked not only an interest in the flicks, but the books as well. Knowledge be damned! Ban free thinking! Funny, that’s just what the plot of this movie is about. Rising against a tyrannical ruling force. Just like V FOR VENDETTA, or 1984. But lets not kid ourselves, who’d be afraid of a little girl with a compass, a ferret, and a drunken bear?Well, that is basically the synopsis here. Children, animals, people, all fighting for freedom from a government bent on universal domination. The prime building blocks of a true award winning movie. With way better battles than I’ve had on the toilet when I had too much Mexican food, and a cooler soundtrack than the noise it makes when the plumbing becomes backed up, THE GOLDEN COMPASS is sure to win the hearts of kids and adults everywhere.

Though the first time I saw each of the L.O.T.R. movies, and thought they were fantastic, there is something about these newer epic sagas that kicks Peter Jackson’s tubby butt all over the place. Maybe it isn’t the overtly obvious attempt to out do one’s self, 3 times over like Jackson tends to do? THE GOLDEN COMPASS kept itself more as an underdog, but one that I think might pick up steam. I sense some rivalry here. Maybe it will spark a KING KONG part 2?

So a little girl named Lyra becomes the savior of the poor children who keep getting snatched by the “authorities” to experiment on them. She assumes a wide range of friends and battle companions to do this, including some rebels, pirates, and witches, you know the normal crowd. The different thing about the people in this movie is that their souls reside in familiars, as it were. Animal forms that are always right next to their human bodies, actually house the spirits of the people and share their feelings, yet act as complete self sustaining personalities on their own. Here might be where the trouble springs for the religious at heart. These usually shape shifting familiars are termed daemons. Whoop de do. Lets blame the friction on semantics, shall we?

As PG-13 as this movie was, how come the controversy didn’t focus much or at all on the fact that one of the talking bears named Byrnison, was paid in whiskey on screen? I suppose that is why a G rating wouldn’t suffice, though I enjoyed the alcoholic bingeing immensely. Nothing like some real life drama that a kid can relate to, instead of some made up child’s fantasy that masks real problems in family structure. I mean whose father comes home every day in shining armor after slaying dragons, you know daddy barely made it home after hours at the bar, knocking back the hard stuff.

Our heroine Lyra and her ferret soul come to find out that the Magisterium, aka the law of the land, are actually heading the kidnapping operation to attempt to sever them from their daemons. Wow, physically cutting away the soul-part of a person. That beats the crap out of SAW, HOSTEL, and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. Odd, I don’t know why Father Damien Karras didn’t use the Magisterium’s technique to help out poor Linda Blair.

Well on her way to finding salvation for all, Lyra and her army demolish the secret experimental building, free the children, and give you a taste that there is more to come with the very weak finish this movie had to offer. On her way back to find her daddy, the one that doesn’t drink, we’re left with a more than incomplete feeling. Could they have added a little extra, or is it just like Asian food where you feel hungry again 2 hours after eating it? Once it was all over, one wondered where is the harm in this movie? What is there to get all defensive about? Or is there more meaning than I though to the phrase, “He who smelt it dealt it”?

Why is it these outrageously fictitious trilogies and otherwise lengthy fantasy works are starting to catch the eyes of directors nowadays? As entertaining as they are, I think a lot is lost from the translation to the screen from the page. But at least a lot of sleeping time can be gained when you compress volumes of reading into a 2 hour movie. So maybe we need to thank directors like Peter Jackson, Andrew Adamson, and Chris Weitz for helping us find the snooze button.

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