Movies

Stardust Review

Yet another movie based on a graphic novel, Stardust is essentially an adult fairy tale. Tristan (Charlie Cox) is a teenager on the verge of manhood and is smitten with a beautiful girl Victoria (Sienna Miller), who is planning on a marrying another local, who just happens to be rich and handsome. As a test of his love for Victoria, he volunteers to retrieve a fallen star for her. To do so, he must cross the wall, a stone wall that separates his town from the magical kingdom of Stronghold.

 

He reaches the star only to find that it is a young woman, Yvaine (Claire Danes). As he tries to return to his village he is pursued by an evil witch (Michelle Pfeiffer) intent on killing Yvaine to make herself young again and several of the kingdom’s princes, who must recover the necklace she now wears (which knocked her from the heavens in the first place).

 

Definitely not for children, despite its PG rating, this is akin to Grimm’s fairy tale with plenty of scariness and almost gruesome scenes. While the movie starts slow, once the hero reaches the star, the movie picks up pace and flows quite nicely. There is plenty of action, comedy and adventure for just about everyone. Probably the best sub-plot is the king (played by Peter O’Toole) and the Princes on their quest to find the necklace. One by one they fall victim to one another in a series of violent deaths, only to re-appear as ghosts in various humourous forms.