I read, and really enjoyed, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials a while back, so I was really looking forward to this film, the first of three. Unfortunately it just isn’t very good. It should be. The story is a wonderful one, Kidman and Craig are fantastic, although Craig isn’t really on screen for all that long, and Dakota Blue Richards is wonderful as Lyra. Some of the other kids aren’t too great, but we’ll let them away. The special effects are, for the most part, superb. The polar bears in particular are fantastic.

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