Based on author Philip Pullman's novel, The Golden Compass tells the first story in Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. The Golden Compass is an exciting fantasy adventure, set in an alternative world where people's souls manifest themselves as animals, talking bears fight wars, and Gyptians and witches co-exist. At the center of the story is Lyra (played by Dakota Blue Richards), a 12-year-old girl who starts out trying to rescue a friend who's been kidnapped by a mysterious organization known as the Gobblers - and winds up on an epic quest to save not only her world, but ours as well.
Before reviewing this movie, I would like to address the church protesting this movie. STOP! All the church is doing is giving the movie more publicity and making people who probably wouldn't have bothered to go and see it now go and see it. The church is making money for the movie at this point . . . . just like with The DaVinci Code (both book and movie). Think about how the book was simply a book until the church went all bonkers and then it became the biggest selling book of all time. The church really needs to take in to account how there is no better press than negative press and if they really want to hurt something, issue one statement and leave it alone. Besides the fact that it is a FANTASY movie. Its not literal or factual in any way. Its some guy's creative material and the church is going all self-conscious and bringing so much more attention to something that would simply go away if left alone.
Now that I got that out of the way, I really enjoyed the movie. I had read the book and didn't think that they would be able to do a good job of transferring it to the screen. I was pleasantly surprised at how they were able to pull it off. The key to any good fantasy movie is character development. This movie did a great job of having Lyra meet each of the important supporting characters and then bring them all together for the awesome climatic battle scene. The only real problem that I had with the movie was that the movie ended soon after the big battle scene when there was still about 20-25 minutes left in accordance to the book. The actual bridge to the next book was left on the cutting room floor. I don't really know why this was done because it made the ending of the movie kind of abrupt when the movie was so well paced throughout. Regardless, this was a really enjoyable fantasy movie. Its nowhere near a Lord Of The Rings quality fantasy movie, but I would say its on par with The Chronicles Of Narnia for me.
I would recommend people checking this out (regardless of what the Catholic church thinks). If you like fantasy movies like this - its worth the price of rental.
