Flawed but still a must see!

Rating: 8/10 (10 August 2007)

Well i've been waiting to see this movie for a while and got the chance to see it Friday morning. Overall it was definitely worth the ticket. Despite the fantastic cast Michelle Pfieffer owns this movie. Every minute she is on the screen it lifts what is a pretty good yarn into something really worth seeing. Whenever the picture gets in the danger of straying into Pirates Of The Caribbean territory(more later) She brings the whole thing back on course and is a delight to watch and you can tell she absolutely had a blast doing it. If there was an an Oscar nomination for most entertaining female actress in a movie she would win hands down in fact she should get a nod for a best actress nomination.
Besides Pfieffer. Rupert Everett also gets props as the other actor who really brings something to the movie and like Pfieffer he helps propel the narrative along. De Niro is great fun but Danes and Cox are merely adequate as the leads and the movie stalls whenever they have a lot of screen time together.
If there is a flaw with Stardust, it's the Pirates Of The Caribbean syndrome. There are occasions where the movie is in danger of losing its way with too much going on and some of it rather extraneous and it's down to Pfieffer or Everett to bring it back on track. Even De Niro's part, though entertaining, is not that necessary.Ricky Gervais has some screen time as a market trader and plays, well, Ricky Gervais.
The first half of Stardust is better than the second, mainly because it's tighter,peaking with the movies best scene at an Inn which Pfieffer 'builds'. Stardust could've been a classic instead it's merely very very good and visually it's astounding and it really delivers when so many movies don't. This could well do $200 million+ at the box office. 8/10