Influential critic Roger Ebert has given The Golden Compass his highest rating of 4 stars calling the film a "darker, deeper fantasy epic than the "Rings" trilogy, "The Chronicles of Narnia" or the Potter films" and others like Harry Knowles, editor of the popular AintItCoolNews.com, have given the film positive reviews however many other American critics haven't been as kind as reflected by the current 44% rating on film review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes.
Many of the reviews should be considered mixed or average (as reflected by the 53/100 metascore on metacritic.com and wholly negative reviews are rare. Kyle Smith of the New York Post is an exception and finds that the film "yields a clanking allegory (Church bad; secular skepticism good) that sucks all the fun away". Our report on the early film reviews last week, which were mostly British, contrast with the more mixed messages from American film critics and a small sample of some of those reviews by popular American print media follow.
Read the Reviews information page for an updated summary of film reviews.
Positive Reviews
Chicago Sun-Times (by Roger Ebert): 'Compass' takes fantasy world in right direction - 4/4 stars
"The Golden Compass" is a darker, deeper fantasy epic than the "Rings" trilogy, "The Chronicles of Narnia" or the Potter films. It springs from the same British world of quasi-philosophical magic, but creates more complex villains and poses more intriguing questions. As a visual experience it is superb. As an escapist fantasy, it is challenging. Teenagers may be absorbed and younger children may be captivated; kids in between may be a little conflicted because its implications are murky.
Los Angeles Times: Special effects and powerhouse acting bring to life a fascinating tale.
...a formidable piece of craftsmanship, using some 1,100 effects shots to bring forth a physical space that has the ability to take your breath away. And using top talent such as Kathy Bates and Kristin Scott Thomas for the voices of the daemons, not to mention the peerless Ian McKellen as the armored bear Iorek Byrnison, also adds to the verisimilitude.
Boston Globe: Flying, adventure, and armored bears! Oh, my! - 2.5/4 stars
"The Golden Compass" pulls you in, daft and alluring. Any adaptation of Pullman's fiction hinges on its Lyra, and in the first-timer Richards, Weitz has found someone worth following. Rangy and impetuous, with a sour, tilted mouth and big eyes that narrow with suspicion, Richards suggests the foul-mouthed street urchin and the future grande dame; she's not conventionally pretty, but she has beauties in her. Above all, she's whip-smart and curious - a real adventuress. She makes the "Narnia" kids look vaguely feeble.
Philadelphia Enquirer: A fantasy realm to explore - 3/4 stars
If Weitz's Golden Compass feels, at times, too crammed with exposition and big set pieces, the film nonetheless works far more successfully than the first Potter pic - the leaden Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - did translating its source material. Visually, The Golden Compass is dazzling, hopscotching from hallowed halls of academe to the Nordic tundra, from luxe manors to creepy, sci-fi-like facilities. The effects couldn't be better.
Chicago Tribune: 'Compass' points to adventure, not controversy - 3/4 stars
...it's easy to get pulled into "The Golden Compass'ƒ|" sprawling grandeur and forget any questionable messages, or the more serious cultural battles to come if Pullman's sequels make it to the screen. But for now, "The Golden Compass" can stand on its own, as a standard-issue but still glorious adventure.
The little girl, Dakota Blue Richards, playing Lyra Belacqua carries the entire film on her shoulders and does a great job of it. She’s not cute in that “Awwwwwww” kinda way, but in a rascally mischievous minx-like way. She’s wily and devilish. There’s a glee to what she does, this pixie… and a there is a glow to her… and when you hear about a prophecy that says she’s special, you believe it. Because she is something special.
Sci Fi Weekly: A welcome would-be trilogy - B
The Golden Compass is nothing if not fast-paced, rousing entertainment. After some cursory nods at setting up the universe, Weitz hits the gas and never slows down. Fans of the Pullman books—The Golden Compass (or Northern Lights) is the first in the His Dark Materials trilogy—will recognize pretty much everything, while it all zips by so quickly that non-fans won't realize they've missed anything significant (or may be as confused as hell by all the characters, rules, etc.).
Mixed Reviews
Reelviews.com (by James Beradinelli) - 2.5/4 stars
I hope The Subtle Knife is made. I would like to see how the cinematic version of the trilogy evolves, and the end of The Golden Compass makes it clear there's more of the story to tell. (The stopping point chosen by Weitz, which isn't the same as the end of the book, makes as clean and upbeat an ending as one could hope for.) One senses that many of the problems evident in The Golden Compass result from the difficulties inherent in introducing viewers not only to new characters but to new ideas and a new world. With those birth pains behind, hopefully the second movie will build upon the strengths of the first and provide a fully satisfying motion picture experience.
New York Times: Bless the Beasts and Children
The sequels are a welcome idea, if only because they might persuade Mr. Weitz and his team to take it slower next time. “The Golden Compass” is an honorable work and especially impressive, given the far smaller, more intimate scale of his last film as a director (with his brother, Paul), “About a Boy.” But it’s hampered by its fealty to the book and its madly rushed pace, which forces you to dash through the story like Lord Asriel.
USA Today: This 'Compass' saga goes south
While the production design is glossy and appropriately fantastical, and the special effects and computer-generated segments blend nicely with live-action characters, the overall saga is surprisingly bland. Nicole Kidman does a devilishly effective job as an impeccably dressed villainess, and Daniel Craig has a too-brief part as the mysterious adventurer who is Lyra's guardian. The highlight is a visually dazzling duel between armor-plated polar bears.
Slate: Philip Pullman's subversive fantasy gets put through the Hollywood blandification machine
Christian activists who fear that this movie will spread the books' anti-clerical, pro-sex message can relax in the knowledge that not a scrap of Pullman's theology has made it through the Hollywood blandification machine. New Line should market the film to churches with the tag line: "Not only won't you be offended by The Golden Compass, you'll have no idea what's going on!"
In one of the few ideas that has survived intact from the book, each human being in Lyra's world has a daemon, an animal that follows them around like a kind of external soul. It's a magnificent conceit, and one that's stunningly rendered by juxtaposing computer-animated animals with live actors. (Nicole Kidman's daemon is an obsequious gold monkey and Daniel Craig's, fittingly, an elegant snow leopard.) The all-CGI battle of the bears (or "clash of the Ians," as McKellen and McShane compete for the title of Most Regal Ursine Voice) is the film's central set piece and its most exciting moment.
There's a lot to like about Weitz's adaptation, and while not all of it has to do with the fussed-over production design and relentless CGI effects, more of its virtues are tied up in those than should be. As if it's afraid to stop for a single moment of reflection, the film rushes from one lushly realized setting to the next, letting characters talk about plot developments between the occasional action setpiece. It's more Phantom Menace than Return Of The King, and the clipped pace never lets us get to know the characters we're supposed to care about... Still, The Golden Compass does manage the job of bringing Pullman's world to the screen. With luck, any future entries will try harder to get the job done right.
It's this undisguised anti-religious theme that has numerous groups in a lather, but perhaps more of an issue for some auds will be the film's lack of exciting uplift and the almost unrelievedly nasty treatment of the young characters by a host of aggressively unpleasant elders.
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To its credit, "The Golden Compass" panders hardly at all in the usual kidpic ways. In fact, what Lyra finds the kidnapped children subjected to in the far north is little short of torture.
Negative Reviews
There's nothing wrong with "The Golden Compass" that Sister Ignatius couldn't fix with a few smart knuckle raps from her ever-trusty ruler. Like an errant child, the movie doesn't pay attention, doesn't do its homework and talks in class.
New York Post: Anti-Church movie review; 'Narnia' knockoff way off course - 1.5/4 stars
Sorting all this out yields a clanking allegory (Church bad; secular skepticism good) that sucks all the fun away while much more enticing-looking stuff - fanciful zeppelin docks and mysterious pirate ships - hovers frustratingly in the background, like Christmas toys that go unused while toddlers play with the empty box. Worse, it's like toddlers ignoring the toys because they're frowning over Nietzsche and sighing about the will to power and the ascetic ideal.
5 comments - Add yours
#1
Let’s try and stay positive. This is a very good movie, one we can be proud of. Is it perfect? No, but then no film is. If we want to see the sequels made we should put aside are fandom perfectioness and keep the word upbeat.
# December 7, 2007 10:26 by xchrisvx
#2 Post Reviews
Sometimes you wish that newspapers would be a little more careful about whom they assign to review a particular movie. The reviews from the Washington and NY Posts are clearly written by people not disposed to like this genre. It is sort of like sending the classical music critic to review a punk rock concert. I was particularly impressed with the NY Post reviewer wrote that he stopped reading Sci-Fi Fantasy when he was 15. What a surprise that he didn’t enjoy a movie that was based on that kind of book!
# December 7, 2007 15:43 by Larry
#3 Keep This in Mind
Stephen King once said that when reviewers ALL agree on something, they’re probably right; and when they disagree on various elements, it’s more a matter of individual taste than an accurate barometer of valuation.
And so it is with movies, esp. THE GOLDEN COMPASS, which has been heavily hyped by the media and necessarily promoted by New Line Cinema, properly concerned about getting a return on its investment.
There are good reviews, mixed reviews, and the occasional negative review so far about THE GOLDEN COMPASS, which leads me to believe that, overall, it’s more positive than not. But critics aren’t the most important element in all this—the viewers are.
Critics see movies through a different lens than does the average moviegoer, who actually is the one who pays the bills, so to speak. If the box office is good this weekend in the U.S., it bodes well for the film.
Is the movie perfect? No, it’s not, and Pullman is the first one to admit that. But it’s very good in many ways, and a lot of people worked hard to make this the best movie they could make: you don’t spend hundreds of millions of dollars to deliberately make a clunker of a movie—you spend the money because you want the best movie you can possibly make, without cutting corners due to budgeting.
The film opens today i the U.S. In fact, in a half hour, the first showing (here in my small part of the world, in southeast Virginia) will mark the beginning of its official release (the sneak preview last week isn’t figured into the box office take for this weekend). So the moviegoers will finally be able to see it and judge for themselves.
My vote is cast: This is far and away the best movie of the holiday season, and I’m looking forward to seeing the next movie, THE SUBTLE KNIFE, as soon as they can get it to the screen.
Author on books about Pullman, Tolkien, JK Rowling, CS Lewis, Stephen King, et al.
# December 7, 2007 17:33 by GBeahm
#4
The different lens is so true, even for me going into the screening with nothing behind it but myself rather than going to the press screening thinking I would be writing a review, the comparison the second time of just me going to enjoy a movie was just that - I was a great deal less judgmental and much more happy to join in the enjoyment.
Mixed reviews and HDM, it’s happened for years in every format: books for the intellectual end, audio for the obvious aural end and silliness, theatre for the tackling and now movie as well.
# December 7, 2007 17:56 by Phit
#5
This film is facing an uphill struggle in the States, a country that’s having a hard time dealing with its own myriad of soul-sucking Spectres. It’s going to do vastly better in all the territories that are unencumbered by the kind of religious single-mindedness and quasi-urban cynicism that so polarises the American mindset today, to the detriment of the great country’s valour. Still, it’s going to be a hit Stateside, even if halfwit pundits like Mr. Faraci of CHUD keep on dragging that $250 million mantra like some sort of a Holy Writ for the truly uninitiated, and uninitiable.
We shall see the sequels filmed, and Mr. Weitz will prevail in bringing Mr. Pullman’s ideas to the biggest screens possible. Our time desperately needs them, more so than any half-dozen Best Picture winners of recent times.
# December 8, 2007 00:25 by Seretur