Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0794043120114
Format: AC-3
Label: New Line Home Video
Manufacturer: New Line Home Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: New Line Home Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2008-04-29
Running Time: 113
Studio: New Line Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 2007-12-07

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Spotlight customer reviews:

Customer Rating:

Summary: Friggin awesome
Comment: I really hope they make the sequels to this. Fantastic story and much more interesting than the typical fantasy garbage hollywood puts out.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Don't bother
Comment: I looked forward to seeing this movie after reading the book. What a disappointment! They so altered the story line and sequence in which events happened that I had to turn it off after about an hour of watching. The book was good, the movie terrible.

Customer Rating:

Summary: His Wasted Materials
Comment: The book is brilliantly written and much more complex than the movie. Of course a 400 page novel can never really condense into a 2 hour movie successfully but in the case of this film, they should have hired a real writer and a non-American director to do it correctly. The "writer/director" responsible for this mess should never be allowed near a film set again. He was just not intelligent enough to comprehend and distill the material, so instead of an interesting and new work of art we get a lightening-paced mess of superficial action highlights. This is not so much a film as it is a poorly constructed (albeit very long) trailer for a much more complicated and rich story. It isn't that scenes have been removed or changed or seem missing somehow (which is expected in any book-to-film adaptation) but whole layers of thematic nuance and subtext and nowhere to be found. Shakespeare for kindergarteners. It is as if the producers and "writer/director" found a diamond and were not smart enough to even recognize what they held in their hands, passing it back and forth until all they had were a few grains of shiny sand that no longer held value or even together. Are there no intelligent people left in Hollywood? Surely someone must have seen the script or an early cut of the "film" and noticed that something was terribly wrong. Did no one even talk to the author (or even Peter Hedges) before the film was in production? What an absolute WASTE of brilliant source material!

Customer Rating:

Summary: Armored Bears!
Comment: This one would have gotten two stars, except for Armored Bears.

Disclaimer: I have not read the book, and I am unlikely to, after seeing the movie. I am glad I waited for the DVD release.

The characters were two-dimensional, and we never really get a feeling of WHY they do what they do.

The evil is vaguely defined, but not really understood.

The bit about a person's soul accompanying that person as an animal sidekick was intriguing, but wasn't exploited, although it was hinted that it was a central issue in the conflict, we were never told why.

All in all, the movie seemed to be a collection of favorite scenes from someone's favorite book, but lacked the fabric which connected those scenes into a comprehensible whole.

But the Armored Bears were pretty cool!

Customer Rating:

Summary: A work of Art and well worth our precious time.
Comment: Here we have tangible evidence we should not let any special interest dictate what we should or should not watch. This film is a delight for children and adults as well. I shudder to think there is someone of voting age out there who would find anything offensive with this film as it is overflowing with heartwarming attributes. From the TreeHouse.

More Reviews

Editorial Reviews:

A fantasy epic with more than a passing resemblance to the Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia film franchises, The Golden Compass takes place in an alternate universe where each human's soul is embodied in a companion animal called a daemon. Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards), an orphan who's lived most of her life among the scholars at Oxford, is intrigued when her uncle, Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig), announces his plans to travel north to investigate the source of some mysterious particles called Dust. Lyra has little hope of following her uncle until a mysterious woman named Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman, at her most icily beautiful) asks Lyra to travel north as her personal assistant. All is not as it seems, however, and the disappearance of Lyra's friend Roger (Ben Walker) sets her on a dizzying adventure. She does have an alethiometer, or golden compass, that can help her see the truth, and a number of companions, including her shape-shifting daemon, Pantalaimion (voiced by Freddie Highmore of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), polar-bear warrior Iorek Byrnison (voiced by Ian McKellen), Texas aeronaut Lee Scoresby (Sam Elliott), and witch queen Serafina Pekkala (Craig's Casino Royale co-star, Eva Green). Even before its release, The Golden Compass was the subject of controversy over its perceived anti-religious themes. While it does involve an oppressive institution called the Magisterium, it's not overtly religious, particularly to a young viewer. The movie's PG-13 rating should be taken seriously, however. Suitable for an older audience than Narnia (though younger than The Lord of the Rings), it deals with complex concepts, violence (though largely bloodless) and implied death, children and animals in peril, and an unrelentingly ominous and unsettling mood.

Despite a few changes and rearrangements, the overall plot of the movie is remarkably faithful to its source material, the first installment of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. It doesn't finish the book, however, and--much like The Fellowship of the Ring did--leaves the viewer hanging in anticipation of the next film, The Subtle Knife, due in 2009. So even though The Golden Compass is impressive--especially with its spot-on cast and terrific visual effects--we probably won't know its full emotional impact until the story is complete. --David Horiuchi