Stardust promised so much

Rating: 5/10 (24 August 2008)

Stardust tells the story of a young man who sets off on a journey to recover a fallen star for his true love, only to find the star as a beautiful woman, and witches and the King's sons are also after her.
Based on Neil Gaimen's novel, this fantasy adventure is interesting and light-hearted, but doesn't have the humour and the true lovable factor to make a true classic.
With an exceptional cast which includes several Oscar nominated actors, and zeitgeist stars, this had true potential but in the end there just isn't enough zest to bring it out of a conventional plot line.
O'Toole (Lawrence of Arabia), Pfeiffer (Fabulous Baker Boys), De Niro (Raging Bull) are just some of the names included and all do their roles justice, but not even the talent of these Oscar nominated actors could do much to satisfy the plot. In the end, it just felt very star driven. De Niro was the best role of the film, the funniest and strangest.
The plot is inconsistent and hardly exciting with plenty of lapses, including a really uncomfortable first meeting between Tristan and Yvaine. The whole Victoria and Tristan also is very far-fetched and daft to base the whole journey upon.
There seems to be too much going on at the beginning, and though it does even itself out, there then seems to be too many perfect timings and chance meetings which gives the plot a lack of realism.
The tagline "The fairytale that won't behave" is the most bizarre and worst one there has been for many years.
Even Take That's Rule the world song for this film wears off, and is only included in the end credits.
Not caring for visual effects, I hardly cared that they were very poor anyway.
There is no true depth on any level of this film, with the plot and visual effects poor, the acting is mild exception. Not worth the price of admission or on DVD, this is a very forgettable fairy tale which promised so much.