Camden New Journal - Movies: Stardust

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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with WILLIAM HALL
Published: 18 October 2007

Peter O’Toole ‘hamming it up’ in Stardust

It’s away with the fairies

STARDUST - Directed by Matthew Vaughn
Certificate PG

PICTURE craggy Robert De Niro as a pirate captain prancing about in a white corset in front of a mirror to satisfy his secret desire to be a drag queen but keep the secret from his band of cut-throats.
Or Michelle Pfeiffer turning in a warts-and-all (literally) performance as a wicked witch, with enough grotesque make-up to rival Quasimodo.
Then try Peter O’Toole hamming it up on his deathbed as a dying monarch leaving his kingdom to one of his seven scheming sons (among them Rupert Everett and Jason Flemyng), four of whom are dead – though their spirits live on.
Just how director Matthew Vaughn tempted them all to take part in this puerile nonsense is beyond me. Based on Neil Gaiman’s award-winning fairytale, the action takes place in a parallel universe separated from a sleepy English village by a stone wall. Charlie Cox makes an appealing hero as a young man from the village who finds his way into forbidden territory in search of a fallen star, which by happy coincidence has left a large crater with a glittering ruby sending out bolts of light.
He is out to impress a village girl (Sienna Miller) but gets side-tracked by another comely wench (Claire Danes) who is on the run from the king’s malevolent sons.
The film is one special-effects set piece after another, some of them a little too scary for the very young. It wouldn’t matter if the acting were up to scratch, but it isn’t.
Ricky Gervais has it right. He surfaces as a sleazy salesman aboard De Niro’s pirate ship – and gets himself stabbed to death after uttering around half a dozen lines of dialogue. Smart move.

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