Stardust

Sadly Stardust only grossed 40 million domestically, but had a production budget of 70 million. Now the studios will whine about how much money they lost, but they made almost 100 million in the foreign markets, so it's hard to say it was a dud (since overall it brought in more than double the production budget), but since it didn't recoup it's production budget domestically I'll bet that's exactly what they label it as. Which is a shame, because it would be nice to see more movies like this.

It was pretty obvious when this movie was released that the studio had no idea how to market it or even who they were trying to market the movie to. At some point they latched onto the idea of putting forth that it's like Princess Bride. Which I suppose it could be, but it's really not (for the record Princess Bride is one of my favorite movies). Oh don't get me wrong, there are some whimsical elements that make it akin to Princess Bride, but if anything I think it's that neither Stardust nor Princess Bride can easily be branded as a specific genre of movie. They're the same only in that they're both like nothing else.

Stardust is a fairy tale. The movie is based off a graphic novel written by Neil Gaiman. It hinges on the fact that there's a world of magic easily accessible on the other side of a wall, but still elusive. Our hero Tristan is trying to woo Victoria. He pines after her but she seems to only tolerate him as a friend as she has desires towards a more debonair suitor. When Tristan and Victoria both view a falling star she tells him he can have her hand in marriage if he returns the fallen star to her within a week. And thus begins the adventure.

The movie can seem a bit slow at times, but overall does a decent job of continuing to move the plot forward. There are some elements of the movie that are simply fantastic. The ghost brothers come to mind with them being hysterical and stealing just about every scene they have. Robert De Niro's turn as the pirate Captain Shakespeare also nails every scene he's in and manages to turn in a fantastically unexpected performance.

Overall I enjoyed the movie and I would suggest giving it a go (in the interest of full disclosure I will say Ginger didn't particularly care for it, so the love for the movie wasn't unequivocal at our house). As I said, it runs just about two hours and can feel a bit long at times. But a lot of the slowness is at the start of the movie because there's a whole lot of exposition that needs to occur to get the story moving properly. I really wish we would see more movies like this from the studios, but given the lackluster box office performance it did domestically I doubt we will.