Stardust memories

About time I became a Grumpy Old Geezer again.

I did not love Stardust.

I liked it, to be sure. A clever fantasy, artful plot, great special effects and so on, but it didn't quite hit the mark for me.

One of the seven great plots. Bastard shopboy weds fair lady, becomes beloved king, lives happily ever after. That's always a winner. Add in some whimsy, some evil, some magic and a few plot twists, and there's the icing on the cake and the cherry on top. The good guys triumph, the badduns die in inventive fashion, music swells as the credits roll.

Well, my eyes were rolling in time with the music all the way through. Predictable as the plot was, once the essential elements were known, a good story well told will always lift me. Look at Notting Hill. You know how that's going to end, almost from the start, and yet it's a movie to watch time and again. I love it.

This one, it's too contrived for my taste. The magic isn't coherent. There are so many loopholes and absurdities that suspension of disbelief is a big ask indeed. A brick wall dividing the magic world from the non-magic, and the portal is guarded day and night. The portal is merely a gap in a stone wall that anyone could clamber over in a jiffy. You'd think the gatekeeper would patch the hole and go home to get some sleep.

Or truth-telling runes that know everything. Throw them up, ask a question, and the truth is revealed in the way they fall. Yeah, right. I know it's just a device, but when the universe, in the shape of a few stones, becomes a sentient being instantly attuned to the petty questions of random humans, then I find it hard to swallow.

And don't get me started on Babylon candles...

Yeah, I know. I loved Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium and that's full of magic.

But in that tale, the magic was coherent and limited. The magic toys and the magic store were juvenile. They didn't have all knowledge and all powers built into them. The mobile made of living seacreatures was something I found difficult, but a poignant sock-puppet or a dancing wood cube, okay, I'll swallow that.

In Stardust, the only time I felt comfortable was aboard Captain Shakespeare's wonderful flying ship, with the lightning nets and the tatty gasbag, and the ridiculously camp captain. Not to mention the overblown pirate crew. That was fun.

The magic was too Hollywood for me. Michelle Pfeiffer plays an ancient crone, made temporarily young by arcane magic. She eats a talisman and becomes gorgeous, drops her robe and her fellow crones gash in admiration and jealousy. And then each time she uses a bit of magic, she pays for it in a few instant liver spots. At one point, her breasts suddenly slump - foooomp-fooomp! - as if whatever is controlling the magic has an eye for drama. Good effect, but contrived. Forced. Imposed on the viewer.

Maybe the book is better. Sometimes an author - and Neil Gaiman is a wonderfully inventive storyteller - can hold a corny tale together with his style. Terry Pratchett is another, where the author's individual style is as much a character as any of the players.*

Maybe I should read the book, hey?

Don't get me wrong. For all of my carping and grumping, I liked this movie. I almost ordered it from Amazon - a constant temptation for easy wish-fulfilment, especially when they seem to know just what I'd like to buy from them each time I visit - or ducked down to the video store, or the library, or went for a download from iTunes, but my daughter unearthed a pirate copy she'd snapped up for a buck in Shenzen a couple of years back. It skipped and paused a few times when we whacked it in the DVD and hit the go button, but my wife and I had a pleasant couple of hours enjoying the fun and fantasy.

I'd recommend it for people into this sort of thing, but it didn't have the sort of magic that puts a movie or a book or a place or a person into my heart forever.