A bigger budget does not a better fairy tale make

Rating: 3/10 (7 September 2007)

Well, where to begin with this one? Let's start by saying that I don't pay much attention to mainstream movies coming out these days, unless they involve a director (Eastwood, Scorsese, Gilliam, etc) that I'm interested in, or the reviews from critics I trust are great. So this one showed up without my knowledge. Initial reviews were mostly decent, and I investigated a bit, as I like fantasy, especially the more fairy-tale type and even moreso such tales that have any orientation towards adults. This might fit the bill! Ah, it's based on the Gaiman/Vess graphic novel; I hadn't read it, but I'd paged through it and loved the art, and I liked Gaiman's work on Sandman. And there just weren't many films playing theatrically here in Vermont that looked any good at all. So, off I went.
It starts out OK, typical young-man-goes-off-to-see-the-world sort of thing, in this case the world beyond the wall outside of his village, literally another world called "Stormhold." How it got to be juxtaposed with this little slice of England, why this particular man gets to enter it -- never explained. Not much of anything is explained, in fact, anywhere in the movie. The man comes back after a night of bliss with a young maiden in the town of Wall on the other side; a few months later, a song arrives on his doorstep. 18 years later the son, Tristan (a fairly dull Charlie Cox) disappears over the wall himself to literally catch a falling star for the bitchy, stuck-up girl he wants to impress (Sienna Miller, showing no talent). The star turns out to be a girl (Claire Danes) and it turns out that everyone in the kingdom wants to get his or her hands on this fallen star, mostly for nefarious purposes.
The film lumbers along, entirely predictably (gosh, Charlie and Yvaine, the star, don't get along at first -- what could be the end result) and at times seems to be trying hard to show a sort of "Princess Bride" wit and self-mockery, but it never gets there for a host of reasons, including dull and obvious direction, very choppy and equally obvious editing, a mostly lethargic and too-serious principal cast, and one of the most overbearing and unoriginal film scores I have ever heard. What few saving graces there are belong to the seasoned veterans in the cast (Michelle Pfeiffer, Rupert Everett, Robert DeNiro and Mark Strong among them) playing character roles. The film feels at least 45 minutes too long, and certainly doesn't help raise my hopes for genre pictures in the future. The CGI was mostly distracting and not all that convincing.
In short, pretty abysmal.