Impressive, but where are the men?

Rating: Null/10 (21 February 2010)

This chick flick fantasy was supposed to be the after thought also-ran competitor to Disney's "Enchanted", the "Narnia" films and "Golden Compass", but winds up being the better film. It's an improvement on a product that is a rarity when one is trying to follow the market leader in order to sponge his run-off.
The sets and situations are all fantasy, but the care taken to execute this film, particularly by hiring the ever beautiful Michelle Pfeiffer to thesp the antagonist role, is quite striking. To me this film surpasses the standard of what "The Golden Compass" was trying to set, and also surpasses the ostensibly more young male oriented Narnia films.
Do I have any quibbles with this flick? Not as such. Pfeiffer does her usual bang up job of showing us her top of the line acting talent. The film benefits from it. And unlike Nichole Kidman's film, where Kidman has to try to carry a film that seems to have bitten off more than it can chew, Pfeiffer's talents aren't the central focus here. There's a solid cast of actors with excellent acting talents who deliver us characters that stand on their own. As an entertainment piece it's a solid performer when cast and story meld with the SFX and other film elements. A thing that "The Golden Compass" never quite achieves.
Quibbles? Yes, there a few. Not many, but some. The martial arts exposition was needless. Mixing in east Asian martial arts with western saber fighting, and tossing in Kung Fu theatrics (somersaults and so forth), for me, pushes the film into the outer edges of high-kamp. Just once I'd like to see a masculine hero does what he does best. Unfortunately those days are probably long gone, so we have corporate film making placating to a female demographic.
And therein lies the the film's real fault. Right now it's just a solid fantasy film. The acting level is right for this kind of flick, and the plot and story are well received, but it seems to really down play any masculine positives. Which makes one wonder about the fans of this film. Me, I happen to like the exposition, and I have the DVD in my collection, but I would've liked the male leads to have been more proactive. Such a movie would've had a larger cross market appeal, garnished a larger market share, and, most importantly of all, been a better movie as a whole.
But, regardless, we do have a solid piece of cinema, even if skewed by corporate studio heads.
So... where are the men? Or are they all black hats in this thing?
Okay, that was overly harsh. Truth be told I do like this film a great deal. See it.