Stardust: Movie Review

The new Matthew Vaughn movie, "Stardust," seems to have as many subplots as there are stars in the sky. Connecting them is easy enough, but this great-looking, well-acted fairy tale could have been a lot leaner and narratively cleaner had it used one of its many swords to trim the fat from its script.

Neil Gaiman based the screenplay on his illustrated novel and approached "Stardust" with the idea that what worked well within the pages of a book would work well on-screen. It’s tough to blame him — the sourcebook is a winner. But as a film, "Stardust" just as easily could have been titled "Starburst."

Beyond the extra padding, though, the good news is that much of the movie is inspired fun.

Ian McKellen narrates a film that stars Charlie Cox as Tristan, a young man who lives within the enclosed hamlet of Wall, where he fancies an unpleasant young woman named Victoria (Sienna Miller), who views Tristan as a bumbling curiosity.

Though she has eyes for another man — a prickly snob with money and power — Victoria is so amused by Tristan’s attention, she agrees to marry him if he brings her a star they watch fall just outside Wall’s walls. She gives him one week. Otherwise, her hand will be clutched by another in marriage.

Though leaving Wall is prohibited because of the dangers involved — outside is a world fraught with dark magic — Tristan agrees. Soon, he’s off to find his star, which turns out to be the lovely Yvaine (Claire Danes), with whom he embarks on a string of romantic adventures.

Squeezing around them is a hive of competing story lines. There’s the dying king of Stormhold (Peter O’Toole, overcome by the wardrobe department), whose remaining three sons are vying for his crown and who will stop at nothing, including murder, to get it. (The king’s other four sons, all dead, are in a kind of black-and-white purgatory; they prove the movie’s comic highlight.)

There’s Lamia (Michelle Pfeiffer, scoring again after her excellent turn in "Hairspray"), a wrinkled old witch who is determined, along with her two sisters, to capture Yvaine and feast on her heart. Doing so will restore their youth in ways that Botox, for instance, simply couldn’t.

Finally, there’s Capt. Shakespeare (Robert De Niro), a cross-dressing pirate who takes to Tristan and Yvaine in ways that guide them through some of the dangers that befall them. One of the chief threats is Prince Septimus (Mark Strong), who needs the necklace Yvaine wears in order to become king, and who joins the cavalcade of evil that gathers to fell her.

While none of this is as memorable or as good as "The Princess Bride," which remains a hallmark of the genre, "Stardust" has a strong enough cast to cast you way above its unnecessary complications. The actors are, in fact, having such a grand time of it here, you might find yourself enjoying the movie more for the energy they bring to their performances than for all the machinations that hurl them together.

Grade: B