This Star Shines Brightly

Rating: 9/10 (22 July 2009)

Highly enjoyable, very imaginative, and filmic fairytale all rolled into one, Stardust tells the story of a young man living outside a fantasy world going inside it to retrieve a bit of a fallen star only to find the star is alive, young, and beautiful. A kingdom whose king is about to die has said king unleash a competition on his several sons to see who can retrieve a ruby first to be king whilst a trio of witches want the star to carve up and use to keep them young. These three plot threads weave intricately together throughout the entire picture blended with good acting, dazzling special effects, and some solid sentiment and humour as well. Stardust is a fun film and has some fun performances from the likes of Claire Danes as the star(I could gaze at her for quite some time) to Michelle Pfeiffer(I could gaze at her at full magical powers even longer) playing the horrible witch to Robert Deniro playing a nancy-boy air pirate to perfection. Charlie Cox as the lead Tristan is affable and credible and we get some very good work from a group of guys playing the sons out to be king who are constantly and consistently trying to kill off each other. Mark Strong, Jason Flemyng, and Ruppert Everett plays their roles well in both life and death(loved this whole thread as well). Peter O'Toole plays the dying killer daddy and watch for funny man Ricky Gervais who made me laugh more than anything in the entire film in his brief five minutes(nice feet). But the real power in the film is the novel by Neil Gaiman and the script made from his creative and fertile mind. Stardust creates its own mythology and its own world and it works.