Stardust

I just plain adored STARDUST.

It's a Maguffin chase / coming of age story in the world of faerie, but with a twist. The Maguffin is a fallen star; but in this world, fallen stars walk, talk, and look an awful lot like Claire Danes. Where do I sign? The comer of age is a young man (Charlie Cox), who crosses into Faerie to retrieve said star as a token of his love for one Sienna Miller, the prettiest girl in town. But he's not the only one who wants her. There's Michelle Pfeiffer as a refreshingly old-school, ruthless witch who wants to cut out her heart and eat it. And there's Mark Strong as a son of the king: he wants to cut out Claire's heart [i]and[/i] steal her jewelry. And what about the pirate with the familiar-looking mole on his cheek? What's he up to, anyway?

So here's a movie that gives us a number of different threads, managing lightly to skip among them without getting tangled in them. Its villains are menacing without being terrifying, its love interests are well and truly lovable, and it manages to gain and maintain and sweet, lighthearted, wonderful tone from beginning to end.

It's no secret that I'm a sucker for writer Neil Gaiman's artistic viewpoint, and he doesn't disappoint with STARDUST. In a week in which I've been hammered with two dreary movies masquerading as adventures, what a delight to find an adventure as joyful, as imaginative, as lovely as STARDUST. What a winner.