I went to see the Golden Compass today and thought it was okay… not great, but still not a bad way to spend a couple of hours. I had read some rather mediocre reviews of the film and more than one news article about the Catholic church being less than impressed so expectations weren’t that high. Actually I couldn’t give a toss what the church had to say about it. I haven’t read the book, so had no idea what the storyline should have been. I definitely felt that it was a bit choppy at the beginning which is probably due to the fact that any movie of this type of book finds it difficult to convey an alternate reality on film in a short period of time to ‘set the scene’. There’s just too much to get the viewer to ‘buy into’ before they can get to the nuts and guts of the plot.
There was plenty of visual effects that probably would have been quite spectacular were it not for the fact that we’ve seen it all before… the LoTR, Narnia and even the Harry Potter films have paved the way already so we’re becoming increasingly hard to impress with the CGI battle scenes etc.
The best bit of the movie for me was the fantastically combative armoured Ice Bears. I totally want one! I’d be fantastic to have one of those things following you around to smite people that pissed me off. Can you imagine it? Why last week alone, I’d have had my Ice Bear take out one Work Cover medical assessment officer, one smash repairer from Wooloongabba, one RACQ customer service representative, one queue-jumper at the Myer sales, one whiney bitch sitting beside me at the Sushi Station, one annoying so called ‘friend’ who only contacts me when they want something and one crazy chickie I know on Facebook who sends me about 30 invitations a week for ridiculous applications I’m not interested in.
Yeah.. having your own personal Ice Bear would rock.
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