Stardust
January 2008 Reviewed by: Charlotte Meyer Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Stardust is a fantasy set in a little village in old England, one that is surrounded by a wall no one dares cross, despite a break in it large enough for a man to walk through. Beyond is a magical world called Stormhold. Oafish young Tristan leaps across the wall in order to retrieve a fallen shooting star he gallantly promises to the girl he hopes to win. Unbeknownst to Tristan, his own father once braved the wall too, had a brief interlude with a woman who claimed to be a princess, and then returned home. Nine months later baby Tristan was dropped at his father’s door. From this gambit an elaborate plot unfolds with classic quest elements: a very ordinary boy receives a task, leaves his familiar world, undergoes trials, meets villains and teachers, and learns to use magic. In falling, the star has been transformed into a girl whom Tristan must protect from the evil-doers who pursue her. He is transformed into a hero. And all the while, the special CG effects just keep on coming.

In directing Stardust, Matthew Vaughn moved, in one step, from low-budget indie into special-effects big-budget filmmaking. His first film as director, Layer Cake, was about the English Mafia and the gritty world of cocaine-dealing. Right after it came fat, sweet Stardust. For a new director, Vaughn managed to attract some big-name talent. Peter O’Toole plays the dying king of Stormhold. Vaughn somehow convinced Robert DeNiro and Michelle Pfeiffer to take comic roles, each playing against type, DeNiro as a gay sea captain and Pfeiffer as one very ugly old witch. And he managed to haul in a heck of a budget. The special effects, the numerous locations, the elaborate sets, and the large cast must have cost millions.

The video transfer is clean and the colors are bright and juicy. New to the technology, Vaughn must have had some excellent CGI mentors. And the Dolby 5.1 sound gives the home system a good workout, from horse hooves over cobblestones to chandeliers shattering on the floor. The featurettes are unremarkable: a bloopers reel, deleted scenes, and a trailer. But the half-hour "Good Omens: The Making of Stardust" is informative and interesting.

Stardust is based on the graphic novel by Neil Gaiman, who is interviewed in "Good Omens." Gaiman recalls with satisfaction how the story slowly evolved for him. But when he visited the set during production, what he felt was guilt, he says. An actual-size authentically detailed pirate ship was under construction. When he had needed a way to get his characters out of a jam, the idea of a flying pirate ship just came to him, and he wrote the paragraph describing it in no time. But actually building it had taken the crew over $1 million and weeks of meticulous planning and work. He had the urge to apologize to everyone for their trouble.

A little of that guilt I feel too. So much effort went into the production of Stardust, I wish I liked it more. "It’s not going to change your life. It’s not going to change the world. But it’s entertaining." So Matthew Vaughn sums up his movie. I wish there’d been more to it than that.

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