Oh, but the book was so much better

Stardust left me very, very conflicted. I wanted really badly to like the movie, seriously I did. It had a great star cast, a talented director who made one of the most assured debuts with "Layer Cake", and it starts off with Ian McKellen's voice wistfully talking about the stars. The movie itself is not bad- far from it, it's one of those old fashioned romantic fantasies, with no big budget special effects, or armies of trolls determined to wipe out humanity, and one special ordinary person who will save the earth. It's a sweet and simple adventure movie, with lots of delightful parts that don't really add up in the end. Charlie Cox is great as Tristran, and completely believable as the boy who leaves his world, and his former self behind to discover quite literally a new place and a new himself. Claire Danes is remarkably "radiant", De Niro is hilariously hamming it up and Michelle Pfeiffer is unbeliavably attractive. And my favorite characters- the seven dead brothers, simply steal the show.

But as with all movies, they changed the story just a bit too much for my liking. I immediately hated it when they changed the beginning in which Dunstan and Una meet- now it's just a random fling, and not the fulfilment of his Heart's Desire. I absolutely detested the way they treat Victoria's character- so now she's just a brainless blonde without a heart (even if they did pick the right actress for the part). And it's the small things that annoy me- the deletion of the small old man, how they completely and utterly changed the climax to make it, I suppose more "heroic" and more "Princess Bride" like (since that's apparently the vibe Matthew Vaughn was going for.) It really pissed me off that it was necessary to show Tristran being all Aragorn and fighting off the witch. Is he less of a hero if like in the book, he didn't actually kill off the pathetic old woman who had been reduced to a pitiful wreck? For all the assuredness Vaughn showed in his debut movie, he seems less at ease with shooting and editing this movie. It seems haphazardly put together, with too many characters and too many sequences not tied down effectively.

The annoying thing is, I actually did like this movie- it's one of those simple adventure movies with a dose of humor and magic that makes you smile and care about the characters. It's hard enough to make a movie about characters rather than wars split up into a trilogy, especially if it's a "fantasy movie". But then I came back and reread the book. As before, Gaiman's writing left me absolutely enthralled.

Then I remembered the requisite Hollywood happy ending in the movie. While I appreciate Ian McKellen's assurance that they "lived happily ever after", and Lord knows I'd love to believe it, there's something about Gaiman's ending of the book, echoing with pain, longing, love and fulfilment all at the same time, that haunts me still.