Inventive and oddly compelling adventure film about a character experiencing things outside of his comfort zone running on an engaging chase narrative and blunt hybridisation.

Rating: 7/10 (17 June 2011)

For the most part, Stardust unfolds like some kind of concoction of Peckinpah's Ride the High Country with Midnight Run by way of the magic or ingenuity of a J.K. Rowling novel - and all of it filtered down and through a lens for people of about fifteen and upwards. Not that there's much wrong with any of that, Matthew Vaughn's 2007 follow up to his quite blistering 2004 debut Layer Cake coming to form that of a fair old frolic through some territory engulfing rather a lot of black comedy; some neat creativity born out of the film's alternate world setting full of ingenuity and its own infrastructure; affectionate characters undergoing somewhat moving arcs and a wonderfully clinical sense of progression as things are kept moving along without ever being allowed to slouch.
The film begins with a voice over, a voice over read by that of Ian McKellen, whom just has the natural ability to make absolutely anything in the world sound as if it's the most important thing you've ever heard. Like a bedtime story, like someone that has read the same tale a thousand times and knows both the precise pitch as well as the tone which ought to accompany proceedings from the off, this fable-like telling of a fable-like tale begins warmly and enthusiastically, and is difficult not to become as involved in as the above suggests would like you to be. The opening tells the tale of how a certain Tristan came to be born, Charlie Cox's character coming about to exist when his father escaped from his sheltered existence in a remote English village named Wall and into the magical mythical world full of wonder; enchantment and young enslaved women named Stormhold – a place kept apart by a lone stone wall of a few feet in height one wonders why it is not harder to cross.
Fast forward twenty or so years, and Tristan is a bit of a wimp whilst still living in the town of Wall; a place in which nothing has changed and everything has remained stilted. While allured by the portal into Stormhold, still guarded ably by an elderly man who's no slouch with a crook, his more immediate concerns lie with his love for Sienna Miller's Victoria, a girl already with a potential suitor whose request for marriage has already come through, but someone whom appears loose enough to break off such an engagement if it means Tristan is successful in a quest she playfully sets him. This item, the Macguffin, of which is later provided with its own personality, so not just a pretty face needing rescuing, is a fallen star named Yvaine (Danes); an item both the power mad brothers, sons of a dying king whose throne is up for grabs, predominantly focusing on Septimus (Strong) need in order to garner said rule but whose quest will not be any easier as they go up against three evil witches, whose fate of eternal youth and grossly enhanced magical powers is on the line should one of them, Lamia, fail in bringing it back. The three witches live life as old; bedraggled; wrinkled coots self-knowingly ugly as sin, Lamia's transformation from this into something a little more 'photogenic', so as to blend into Stormhold more easily, sees her morph not into some model-turned-singer-turned actress under thirty the film may have cast, but Michelle Pfeiffer - such is the manner in which Pfeiffer has aged so gracefully.
Principally, the film is about this young man in Tristan desperately wanting to venture out beyond what he knows and entrusts to impress somebody he barely knows beyond that of looks from afar and bare bones reputation. His experiences in Stormhold, making up the crux of his circular journey, turn out to be rather frightening and somewhat dangerous and his coming into contact with this fallen star Yvaine sees him learn to both accept and respect what it is he has to begin with as well as to come to learn how to love a member of the opposite sex through ties and bonds which unfold naturally over a set period of time over lusting for the town's pretty-girl everybody wants a chance at. In depicting such notions, the film is quick to portray the predominant female characters as vampish or even evil; Yvaine representing the ultimate in purity or innocence whom, in the eyes of the film, are far more accessible and righteous and allow the protagonist to see sense.
The film is a road movie of sorts, a touching enough romance contributing to a young man's exposure to the world and an at once brutal chase movie documenting some fairly desperate characters each chasing the same item for sake of respective goals leaning towards absolute power and/or pride. Its combinative aura of hybridisation and homage is encapsulated in both its dizzy supporting cast of screen legends and lower-key British talent whom, up until only a few years ago, were more inclined towards televisual work as well as its spasmodic leaping from content more inclined towards fantasy, fairytale and adventure clashing with some rather violent sequences egged on by the infrequent helping of animal cruelty. Regardless, Vaughn is a director that knows how to keep things moving along; he knows he's running off of a plot that might've been torn from a mid-50s, Classical era Hollywood B-movie Western feature of about 85 minutes and just runs with it – the results, of which, are more often than not really quite funny; somewhat practical and remarkably absorbing.