Stardust (2007)

---

Directed by: Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Charlie Cox, Claire Danes, Michelle Pfeiffer and Mark Strong

I really love a great fantasy film. There are few genres that can truely just transport the viewer to a whole new world and make them completely forget the real world for a couple of hours. The unfortunate part is that there so few REALLY GOOD fantasy films. We have The Lord of the Rings, Willow, Dragon Slayer and Conan The Barbarian as well the semi-fantasy Harry Potter films. Other than that though, the genre for many years was almost exclusively populated by such awful "greats" as Deathstalker, Amazons and Barbarian Queen where the only real point of the film seemed to be to get women nude as often as possible... not that I was complaining as a teenaged male watching these films for my fantasy fix! The point though is that for many years there was nothing more than place holder films just barely keeping the genre alive. Thanks to the well deserved uber success of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings though, we have been treated to several good fantasy films in the last few years. I don't know if Stardust would have been fortunate enough to get made if it hadn't been for Peter Jackson laying the successful fantasy framework but MAN am I glad that Stardust did get made!

Stardust is an interesting tale that begins in an English village called Wall, so named because of the stone wall that runs along side the village that according to legend is the border to another world. This other world is the kingdom of Stormhold. The film begins with a young man from the village of Wall named Dunstan Thorn. All of his life Dunstan has heard that the wall is the border to another world and frankly, Dunstan simply doesn't believe it. He has decided that he is going to cross the wall to prove to everyone that it's only a field on the other side. After tricking the guard who stands on the Wall side of the wall(did you follow that?) Dunstan crosses into Stormhold and soon comes across a market where he meets a woman working as a gypsie type vendor. After a brief tryst with the woman Dunstan returns home only to have a son dropped at his door 9 months later. That son is our main character and hero, Tristan Thorn.

The problem is that Tristan doesn't really start out as much of a hero. Tristan works as a shop boy in Wall and is basically taken advantage of and strung along by Victoria, the town "beautiful girl" that he's hopelessly infatuated with while she is more impressed with the town bully, Humphrey. Once Tristan looses his job because he ignores other customers so he can cater to Victoria, he spends all of his savings on a bottle champagne so he can impress her with a candlelight pinic by the wall.

Right at this exact time across the wall in Stormhold, the old king, played by Peter O'Toole, is on his death bed surrounded by his sons. Apparently Stormhold has the interesting tradition that the crown can only pass to the last surviving male heir of the bloodline... which of course means that all of the sons of the king have to kill each other till there is only one left to take the throne. Usually, all of this fratricide takes place before the old king dies so succesion is a simple matter. In this case however the princes of Stormhold have been a little lazy and there are four of them still hanging around so the king proclaims that whoever can retrieve his royal rubie and is the last surviving brother shall have the throne, at which point the rubie flies out the window and into the heavens where it knocks a star out of the sky and deep into the Stormhold coutryside. The problem is that the star is not a lumo of rock, it's a woman named Yvaine, played by the super attractive Claire Danes. Here we jump back to Tristan and Victoria where Tristan sees the falling star and promises to retrieve it to prove his love for Victoria. After attempting to cross the wall but being rebuffed by the guard, Tristan has a talk with his father in which his father reveals Tristan's magical origins and he is given a letter from his mother that was in the cradle with Tristan when he was delivered to his father. The letter is wrapped around a Babylon Candle, a magical candle used for super fast traveling. Tristan is told to think only of his mother as he lights the candle and he vanishes from his father's home in Wall. Of course, though, along the way he starts thinking of Victoria and the fallen star and the next thing he knows he flies full bore into Yvaine who doesn't appreciate it too much as you might expect. Tristan, not discouraged at all that his star is really a woman begins his quest to try and convince Yvaine to come back to Wall with him to impress Victoria.

What follows is an amazing tale of magic, adventure, danger and love where Tristan and Yvaine have to survive heart eating witches, murderous would-be kings, sky pirates and Stormhold in general so Tristan can get back to Wall and Yvaine can get back to the night sky with their skins intact. This film just OOZES style, atmosphere and flat out coolness and has a KILLER cast. The epitome of beauty, Michelle Pfeiffer plays a evil, hideous and old witch desperate to cut out the heart of Yvaine so she can regain her beauty. Legendary tough guy Robert De Niro plays a across dressing sky pirate who captures and sells lightning, in my opnion the film is worth seeing for this element alone. Peter O'Toole as the old dying king. Sienna Miller as the bratty Victoria and Dexter Fletcher as De Niro's first mate. ALL of these actors put in great performances and make Stardust one heck of a fun and entertaining film. It's easily one of the best if not THE best film I've seen in the last year. I watched it four times in five days and have seen it since and am not sick of any part of it yet. I put this film up against any of the uber successful Harry Potter films and think it's just as good if not better than any of those. I really look forward to seeing more from director Matthew Vaughn and new comer star Charlie Cox and I whole heartedly recommend this film to any fan of fantistical fiction... or even any fan of a good fun adventure film. You NEED to see this film!




This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it



BUY Stardust Now!

Powered by Simple Review