The film is the story of Tristran (Charlie Cox), a working class lad living in a quiet 1800’s English village. He is desperately in love with Victoria (Sienna Miller), a snobbish girl who promises to marry him if he can retrieve a fallen star which has landed somewhere beyond a forbidden wall on the outskirts of town. Convinced he can win Victoria’s love, Tristran embarks on a quest beyond the wall, into the hidden land of Stormhold.

Finding the star turns out to be the easy part- the trouble comes in actually getting back to the wall. The star turns out to be a beautiful girl named Yvaine (Claire Danes). She is none to happy about being knocked out of the sky, and not thrilled to be dealing with Tristran either. However, as she later says, love can sometimes look an awful lot like loathing- and, as they travel through the land encountering witches, unicorns, sky pirates, princes, and the like, their relationship deepens. I won’t divulge the ending, but if you’ve seen more than one romantic comedy in your life, you can probably see where this one is headed.

That’’s the thing though- from a purely analytical perspective, “Stardust” has a lot of problems. The romantic story is earnest, but follows a well-worn and predictable path. And, like many fantasy stories, this film doesn’t do a very good job establishing it’s own environment- Stormhold doesn’t feel so much like a country as a series of unconnected locations.

Otherwise, Cox puts in an acceptably guileless performance as Tristran, and Michelle Pfeiffer is terrifically evil as head witch Lamia. However there are some performances that seem a bit off too- Robert DeNiro seems to be having fun as the eccentric pirate Captain Shakespeare, but his performance is somewhat erratic when it comes to accent and attitude. On the other hand, Claire Danes retains a vice-like grip on her British intonation, with mixed results. For the record, I’m not sure why it was necessary for an actress portraying a star to even attempt an accent in the first place- never mind one that often sounds over rehearsed.

However, despite these issues, “Stardust” has a cheeky adolescent energy to it that I found endearing-irreverent, but good-natured. In a way it reminded me of the type of stories I would attempt to write as a kid. The sixteen-year-old comedian in me really responded to this film- hopefully the ones in the audience will as well.

Write Comment
Name:	Guest
Title:
Comment:
Code:*

Powered by AkoComment 2.0!