Every year we trot off to the local cinema to see the Christmas blockbuster and every year we come home bitterly disappointed. Actually, I come home disappointed. The rest of the family range from "I quite liked it" to "It was very long" - not exactly glowing tributes.
After numerous bum-numbing Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter films, hopes were high for The Golden Compass, the opening adaptation of Phillip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials. With mostly favourable reviews, a superb cast and Pullman's storytelling to draw from, what could possibly go wrong?
Throwing huge amounts of money at the screen - the film cost between $200m and $250m to make, depending on which sources you believe - does not guarantee a good movie. Sure, it looks great, but what the hell is it about? The Catholic League, who have got their knickers in a twist about the film's perceived side-swipe at Christianity, clearly haven't seen it. If there were hidden messages having a pop at organised religion, they were either lost in the endless traipsing around the frozen north in search of "dust" (whatever that might be) or they were too subtle for this Godless cinema-goer to recognise.
"Ah, but you haven't read the book, have you?" is the response you get from otherwise perfectly sane and respected friends when expressing your dismay at the lack of narrative cohesion in these literary adaptations. Since when was reading a book a prerequisite to enjoying a movie? If the director can't get the story across in a couple of hours without losing half the audience then he has bitten off more than he can chew and should go back to film school and re-learn how to spin a good yarn. The director, Chris Weitz, likes to write his own scripts and, apparently, considered the services of Tom Stoppard surplus to requirements. We have all made mistakes, but probably not $250m-worth.
The priorities of the makers of modern family films are all wrong. CGI techniques used extensively in The Golden Compass - and the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter films - are hugely expensive but you will get a darn sight more bangs-for-your-buck if you start off with a half-decent script and give some of the greatest actors more than 60 seconds' screen-time and some dialogue that actually moves the story forward. A bit less of the exploding witches and a bit more of Derek Jacobi and Christopher Lee and we might have got a watchable movie. To have Nicole Kidman playing such an evil character and not give her any funny or memorable lines is a criminal waste.
And here is the really painful part. The film dribbles to an end without a conclusion. The beginning-middle-end format has gone out of the window. Commercial considerations mean that these blockbusters just stop in the middle of nowhere. You are cast adrift in the frozen north until next year's helping of hocus-pocus hits a screen near you. I can hardly wait ...
