Friday

I've been hearing about Stardust for a while now. The first I knew was that it was written by Jane Goldman, the wife of Jonathon Ross. For a long time this coloured my opinion of it. A few months ago they started showing trailers in the cinema. It looked fairly bad. Recently, however, I discovered that the story is actually written by Neil Gaiman (and Charles Vess), and merely adapted to the screen by Goldman (and someone else). Entirely influenced as I am by names and reputations, I then began to think more of this film. The premise sounds vaguely entertaining, but of course also very predictable. The problem was, and is, that this seems like a film out of time. Perhaps it would've worked in the 1980s, but we're just not interested in fairy-tales at the moment. Maybe the studio is hoping this movie will revive our interest in fantasy films, but I very much doubt it's going to do so. The title is awful, and the mere fact that it has so many stars in it makes an audience suspicious. Stars should be hard to obtain for a film, and to see so many cheapens them, in a way. So, it is not top of my list of movies to see, but I will attempt to do so, albeit sceptically.