It's no Northern Lights,Compass loses direction.

In a parallel universe, young Lyra Belacqua journeys to the far North to save her best friend and other kidnapped children from terrible experiments by a mysterious organization.

Dakota Blue Richards: Lyra

His Dark Materials: The Northern Lights, the original name for the book, in England. What a mysterious, enticing title for a book. The Golden Compass? Well, it doesn't quite have the same effect on us, does it? The use of the American name of the book for the film really didn't falter my opinion of the film, but as early warning signs come, it doesn't get much more obvious than this. We should have assumed from the start, that this was going to be a very different venture, to the book.

As a huge fan of Philip Pullman's epic trilogy, I had been eagerly anticipating this film adaptation for a long while. I had fallen in love with the books a while back, not due to the fantastical elements, but due to the way it introduced this fantastical parallel universe to the reader in a slow, subtle, familiar way and made it feel real and tangible. The books are gritty, rugged and at times violent, and the stories' themes are philosophical and even spiritual in a way. It grieves me to say that the film misses the point, concentrating instead, on the fantasy, the action and the giant talking polar bears.
Franchises and series like Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings have never apologized about their overt paganism. Likewise, The Chronicles of Narnia have never been accused of being subtle as a Christian allegory. These series, in both literary and film forms, have been massive hits due to their unapologetic natures that speak truths to their ardent fan bases. British writer Philip Pullman's darkly subversive anti-religious fantasy books have also been hugely successful, more so overseas than here in the States. Stripped of the books' overt atheistic messages, The Golden Compass takes a reverse psychology approach in its film treatment and oddly positions itself as an apology for Pullman's work. The result is a tepid affair that joins a long line of fantasy films about children discovering they are the chosen ones destined to save the world. At least this film is refreshing in its stance on girl-power as represented in the main character Lyra, played wonderfully by newcomer Dakota Blue Richards, who apparently is a graduate of the Dakota Fanning school of acting. Whether or not this tactic to strip the film of its soul (much like the Magesiterium strips children of their daemons) will make the film broadly appealing enough to warrant a franchise has yet to be determined.

The Golden Compass manages to remain dull and unimaginative. Its idea that these people (who inhabit an alternate 'Earth) have their souls on their outside is an interesting one, yet on screen, we are supposed to relate to these characters by way of their animal accomplices, for instance: Lord Asriel's (Craig) is a beastly feline: strong and powerful who knows what's what; Marisa Coulter (Kidman) has a monkey of some sort; suggesting not a playful and cheeky persona but one that could change from good to aggressive very quickly; the other example is of the hero; Lyra Belacqua (Richards) whose daemon keeps changing from cat to bird to chipmunk suggesting she hasn't quite 'found herself' yet although the fact she's only about ten probably has something to do with this. Fine, you think but the faceless enemy soldiers that guard utopian government looking buildings as disturbing experiments go on inside are all accompanied with either Doberman dogs or wolves – do the guards not have personalities? This is a glaring lack of consistency.

The actual character hero of Lyra was also a problem. There are too many scenes that rely on child acting in this film and what's more, Lyra goes about her adventure as if she's twenty years older that what she actually is. She is smarter than she should be; braver and more of a leader than she should be. More often than not, she achieves things adult characters cannot: persuading the polar bear to join them; destroying the 'cutting' device and being able to negotiate her way out of death with a king polar bear who is a hundred times more powerful than she is. Of course if she was any older, the film would be Tomb Raider mixed with Narnia but that's a different story. I'm sure there was faithful material to the book somewhere in The Golden Compass but there's me thinking it was perhaps going to go down the route of Indiana Jones or The Mummy, how wrong I was. The film sets up its idea for its narrative in a similar adventure way, what with the mentioning of the alternative world (our world) and the giving of the compass to Lyra and yet it totally ignores its roots from here on. This film basically turns into a recruitment process with Kidman's and Craig's characters hovering around in the background although never creating a presence, this is cannon fodder for nine year olds, but then there's the complicated narrative and the fact other films of this genre, were for people of all ages anyway.

What we are led to believe is that in this world, they haven't made the technological advancements like cars and aeroplanes (their cars resemble horse and carts without the horses and they fly around in blimps) yet build vast utopias, that still find room to house criminals of some description, whose main aim is to 'cut' away the souls of children at the first mention of the word 'dust' – yes, it's that bizarre. Mangled in with this, the character of Iorek Byrnison (McKellan - who is a CGI Polar Bear hilariously resembling a down and out P.I. in a film noir when first introduced) is given a sub-plot involving him rediscovering his 'armour' (metaphor for masculinity) and from there, he develops into a really guilty example of a fatherly figure for Lyra after it's established she lost her father previously. Thrown in amongst all this tosh is a CGI fist-fight between two polar bears trying to prove who is 'king'.

It is the right time to mention the cast: Nicole Kidman delivers an eerie and chilling rendition of Marisa Coulter; a person who knows people high up in whatever hierarchy the school has. She also seems to get nastier and nastier as the film progresses but some of her lines she's given do not aid her in her career: "I'll find you, Lyra(!)" Oh, how evil. But the biggest disappointment is Daniel Craig who's present for about three scenes and then vanishes – this'll be the easiest pay-cheque he'll ever pick up, unless they make a sequel. In short, avoid this film even if you are a fan of the genre.