Stardust

(Movie Review)

This wasn't a great movie, but I found it to be a very pleasant waste of time.

Part of it might just have been the mood I was in. I was exhausted from a day of hiking around and swimming, and I wanted to just sit in my apartment and watch a light adventure story--Something that wouldn't make me think to hard, but something that might excite the imagination just a little bit.

This fit the bill. It was fun, and imaginative, and whimsical.

There are a lot of bad fantasy movies out there, but I’m a great fan of the genre when it’s done right, and this was done right. Like all great fantasy movies, it doesn't rely simply on big battle scenes, but also manages to convey a sense of wonder about a strange new world.
The film tries to create the feeling of a fairy tale, and I think it succeeds. It borders on being a little bit too sappy at the end, but on the whole it strikes a good balance.

There’s a lot of black humor mixed in as well, which threw me off at first but once I got used to it I started to enjoy that as well.

As a fan of “The Office” and “Extras” I enjoyed seeing Ricky Gervais in this movie, although I wish he would have had a bigger role. In my opinion he is (once again) criminally underused. Although during the time he is on screen, he plays a character very similar to his character in “The Office”, which perhaps is just one big inside joke. People who have seen “The Office” will think it’s funny, people who have not might not get the humor.

My only regret is that once the movie was over, I saw on the ending credits that it was actually based on a book by Neil Gaiman. Maybe I should have read the book first before watching the movie.
….Oh well, with my memory, I’m sure by the time I get around to reading the book in a couple years I’ll have forgotten most of the movie anyway.

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Stardust: Movie Review (Scripted)