All Kidman Aside

We know all about folks eagerly awaiting, say, the next Harry Potter installment or the upcoming Batman movie, but has there been a franchise entry that people have seemingly wanted to avoid as much as The Golden Compass (**1/2 out of four), the first of three pictures based on Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy? Christians have been on the warpath for believing that the film attacks their religion. Non-Christians have been furious because they’ve heard that the movie removes all condemnations of Christianity. Book lovers have braced themselves for a bastardization of their beloved text. And since fanboys like to have their say, we can assume that Lord of the Rings devotees have their knives out for any flick they feel will challenge their Tolkien trilogy for Ultimate Cinematic Supremacy.

That’s all well and good, but let’s remind ourselves of the bottom line: A movie is a separate entity from a book and as such deserves to be judged on its own terms. And on that level, The Golden Compass is an acceptable piece of fantasy fluff, a cluttered mishmash that nevertheless can lay claim to its own scattered charms.

An ambitious tale set in an alternate world, The Golden Compass opens with an expository crawl meant to set up the story, but not since 1984’s ill-fated adaptation of Dune has a supposedly helpful introduction been so dense and occasionally impenetrable. Yet amidst all the yammering about “Dust” and “daemons” (terms which become better defined as the movie progresses), we can glean that this is basically yet another tale about an unassuming youth who emerges as the only person able to vanquish the evil force that’s poised to conquer all (cross-reference with Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter and Frodo — and that’s just for starters).

Top-billed Nicole Kidman plays the villainous Marisa Coulter, but the lead is actually Dakota Blue Richards, a talented child actress whose presence goes a long way toward keeping this story grounded. Richards stars as Lyra, the spunky lass whose devotion to her uncle, the explorer Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig), and to her young chums contributes to her landing in the middle of a large-scale skirmish that finds the fascistic members of the religious ruling body (with the aid of the aforementioned Mrs. Coulter) fighting all manner of outsiders in an effort to not only hold onto power but insure that they eliminate the notion of “free will” entirely. Lyra emerges as the unlikely leader of the revolution, backed by such disparate characters as an airborne cowboy (Sam Elliott) and an armor-packing bear (voiced by Ian McKellen).

The Golden Compass doesn’t even run a full two hours, an inexcusable offense since it never allows the characters much time to breathe — sometimes literally. Zipping from one adventure to the next, it often plays like a highlights reel from a multipart miniseries (the Potter, Narnia and LOTR films all had the sense to clock in at 2-1/2 to 3 hours apiece). Craig appears in two segments before disappearing from the story (presumably, he’ll rack up more screen time in the planned sequels), while Christopher Lee and other dignified British actors appear briefly as the venal church overlords before similarly vanishing completely. And Eva Green (Craig’s co-star in Casino Royale) flits about the screen as a kindly warrior-witch, but I’ll be damned if her place in the saga is ever properly explained (in terms of fantasy overload, her character’s like the unnecessary M&Ms placed atop a three-layer chocolate cake).

But for all the narrative shortcuts taken by director-adapter Chris Weitz (yes, he of American Pie fame), the movie still works fairly well as a high-flying fantasy tale for the younger set. Budding girls are sure to fall behind Richards’ sassy heroine, while boys will dig the hand-to-hand — excuse me, paw-to-paw — combat between two fearsome CGI bears (and here’s a rare occasion when ample use of computer-generated effects enhances the project rather than overwhelms it). As for adult audience members, they can enjoy the fine work by Kidman, who’s all slinky, silky menace as the purring Marisa Coulter. Whether displaying a false maternal front to the motherless Lyra or slapping around a moody monkey, she’s a movie villain worth remembering — in fact, if she were any more evil, she would have to change her name from Marisa to Ann.

IT’S LONG been a pet peeve to hear when someone dismisses a movie simply because they found the central character to be unlikable. Unless the complainant was planning on inviting said character over for tea, it shouldn’t matter if the person’s unlikable so long as he or she is interesting. But Margot at the Wedding (** out of four) solves the problem: Here’s a character both unlikable and uninteresting, meaning there’s no room for debate.

Writer-director Noah Baumbach’s first film since the far superior The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding is the sort of talkfest that used to serve as bread and butter for European auteurs like Ingmar Bergman and Eric Rohmer back in the 1970s. Yet those masters used dialogue — always witty, often lacerating — as road maps into their characters’ psyches, as a way for audiences to understand what made them tick. Here, Baumbach merely uses words as weapons, as a means for his people to tear each other down without ever letting us see beyond the surface cruelty and understand why these folks have a need to draw first (and second, and third) blood.

As the title character, a miserable woman who hopes to talk her estranged sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) out of marrying a layabout clod (Jack Black), Kidman delivers a fearless performance that asks for little mercy. But because she’s not supported by Baumbach, her Margot remains a one-note cipher, a bullying beauty whose poor treatment of everyone around her, including her own son (Zane Pais), is never delineated beyond some vague chitchat pertaining to daddy issues. For all its supposed dramatic heft, Margot at the Wedding ultimately proves to be as weighty as cake frosting.