Chris Weitz's disappointing adaptation of the first book in English novelist Philip Pullman's
His Dark Materials trilogy feels simultaneously too long and desperately rushed: For all the complicated backstory, weighty themes, action set pieces and fanciful production design, it's oddly unengaging.
Though the film is positioned as a straightforward good-vs.-evil epic, Pullman posits a more nuanced struggle between the thorny freedom of self-determination and blind submission to authority. In hopes of getting newcomers up to speed, Weitz starts with a lumbering lump of voiceover exposition, whose gist is that there are parallel worlds connected by a m...
Released:
2007
Rated:
PG-13
Length:
118 mins