Of course, when I first heard about the film adaptation I was both excited and apprehensive. How could such a powerful and complex trilogy be adapted for a mass market cinema audience, and how could it sidestep the controversy of its anti religious themes? The answer: it didn't.

As a generic fantasy adventure, “The Golden Compass” is mildly diverting. Well cast, pretty to look at with interesting designs for costumes and artifacts and gorgeous sweeping shots of Norwegian landscapes, it ought to be a very good film, but it falls flat through mediocre, even boring, direction, a pedestrian script, wasting its stellar cast with a sparse selection of dull lines, and thanks to a trite musical score, the film starts to feel like a poor facsimile of Disney. For those unfamiliar with the plot, it must have been daunting, as the story flits uncertainly around, moving desperately fast, but for those familiar with it a growing sense of anger was palpable in the cinema!

Elements of plot are changed inexplicably, the ending is cut infuriatingly short, crucial and excellently evoked set pieces are mangled beyond belief. The CGI creatures look, for the most part, vaguely acceptable, the daemons (souls of humans in the form of animals which walk by their human side) are effective enough, but are made unnecessarily cute, Lyra's daemon Pantalaimon, a cautious voice of reason in the books, becomes little more than comic relief, whilst the armored bears simply look ridiculous, particularly in making the lead bears look like the actors voicing them (a polar bear version of Sir Ian McKellen, good grief!) and the fight between them is depressingly bloodless.

The overall impression is that New Line Cinema have become complacent following the success of “the Lord of the Rings” and have decided that “The Golden Compass” should mimic it, thus we must have the mysterious explanatory prologue, the grand orchestral score, the scene with the collapsing bridge, the sweeping shots of landscape, Christopher Lee on the bad side and Ian McKellen on the good side. A deep disappointment. I dread to think what will happen to the next two installments of the trilogy, especially with this film's instance to “play down” the religious aspect of the piece; the ideological heart of the story.