This evening I saw Stardust, the film based on Neil Gaiman’s novel. The film has already had its US release, and it’s fair to say that it didn’t perform outstandingly there. But is that a fair reflection of the film?
I’d say not.
The problem is that it’s a really hard film to market. The closest comparisons are either the wonderful The Princess Bride or perhaps The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. It’s a fantasy tale set just the other side of the village of Wall, as Tristan goes in search of a fallen star to give to his true love.
Much as Charlie Cox gives a great performance as Tristan, and Claire Danes is lovely as the star – Yvaine. The real scene-stealers are Michelle Pfeiffer as the evil witch Lamia, and a brilliant turn by Robert De Niro as a camp sea captain. De Niro is great at comedy.
The film doesn’t take itself enormously seriously, and you’ll recognise just about every person in the film. As I suspected, Ricky Gervais is a relatively minor character, over-used in the trailer.
But overall it’s a cracking film.
It doesn’t open in the UK until October 19, but it’ll be worth searching out when it does.
Just one small other point. In the past I’ve been known to moan about preview screenings where the distributors insist that you hand over your mobile phones before the screening, leading to inevitable bunfights afterwards when several thousand people all try to get them back simultaneously. After tonight’s experience, I beginning to think that maybe they’ve got it right after all, and I’ve got it wrong. Because this film opened in US some time ago, security was relaxed and nobody asked me for my phone. Naturally I turned it off. Not so, the woman in the row just in front of me who arrived late to sit with her friend. Even though the film had started, she fired off a text. I gave her the benefit of the doubt. But ten minutes later she was still texting and even phoning. In a darkened cinema, the effect was akin to someone waving a torch around in front of me. Eventually, with no end in sight, I leant forward and asked her very kindly if she would turn it off. She did, but five minutes later, she and her friend left the cinema. Good. People like that deserve to be kicked out of cinemas. It’s relatively common for security guards to peer at audiences during early releases to check we’ve not somehow smuggled a camcorder into the cinema. I wish that they’d instead deal with anti-social mobile phone users. That way, I might actually begin to enjoy the cinema experience some more.