Saw this last weekend, and I have to say that this has been the best movie I've seen this summer. One of those sheer delights that you don't want to end.
However, now that I'm starting to read the book, I'm afraid that I might end up being disgusted with how they changed things. I'm a big Neil Gaiman fan, but Stardust never appealed to me until now. Just by flipping through and reading passages and looking at Charles Vess' illustrations, I can tell a lot has been changed, most notably that the world beyond the wall is in fact Fairie. In the movie, it's just an original fantasy world, so much of the old ballad elements are lost. This said, I'm still optomistic that I will like both book and movie as individual works in their own rights, especially since they are so different. I already find the movie's ending more satisfying than the book's (I peaked).
The film is sweetly romantic, well-paced, and visually exciting. With the special effects, I was initially not empressed with moments like the pet-sized elephants at the fair, but the sky ship, the dead princes, and Yvaine's starshine were enchanting. Most rememberable were probably the performances. Charlie Cox was your standard charming but bumbling Gaiman hero, and you fall in love with him, even at his stupid moments. I haven't liked Claire Danes so much since Little Women, but she was excellent as Yvaine, just the right proportions of ethereal and spunky. I'm a little torn over that Michelle Pfeiffer is mostly playing villainesses now, but I cannot deny that she plays them well. I'm glad I had forgotten that Peter O'Toole and Ricky Gervais were in it, because it was fun to be surprised by them. Robert De Niro hasn't been in a movie like this since Brazil, and he obviously had a lot of fun with it. He steals whatever scene he's in without being too overpowering.
Telling from the trailers, which included Beowulf, The Spiderwick Chronicles, and The Golden Compass, fantasy is the most bankable in-thing to do in the post-Lord of the Rings industry. Maybe with movies like Stardust it'll be a fantasy-film Renaissance, like it was in the 80's. Imagine this decade creating movies more in line with the Neverending Story and Legend!
Stardust worked, but it was more aimed at adults, but some movies, like the dreaded upcoming Dark is Rising, seem to be pandarizing to tweens, ripping out its literary elements and simplifying its mythology. However, The Golden Compass looks very promising, and the Narnia movie appears to be respectable to its source.
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