Beign a great fan of the harry potter series I was really thrilled to see another fantasy novel on the big screen. However the disappointment was the rule in this movie since it fails in many important aspects of basic filmography: Script: The writer really does not know is Job. Many scenes appear useless without any real purpose to exist. Of course, having many useless scenes in it You have not the time to build up a convincing stream of events, so, many characters know things they should not know and friendships start without a reason appearing dull and quite stupid without any depth of their own. This is true for everyone, from the gypsies to the bears. Only Pantalaimon seems up to the hype. Maybe because You do not need a scene to introduce it.... Talking about dumbness, it is memorable the moment in which Serafina Pekkala appears for the very first time and, in only two seconds, puts Lyra on a quest to prove herself with the ethylometer(which has always got the same, very lame sequence. just like cheap cartoons...).
And that takes us to the second BIG, HUGE mistake: Timing: Here you do not know if the the director, the mounter, or both are to blame but, to put it simply, the movie does not have pace. Often the scenes seem "glued" together more then in a stream of events. In a second You find Yourself running for Your life, the second after, the same character finds himself in total dullness...characters often know things they should not yet know since no one told them. In the resulting avalanche of events the viewer is completely stoned by a watery soup of bear roars(which, like the ethyliometer is always the same sequence), ice, gypsies, ships and witches.
In the end, if You take pace away from music You get noise. And that goes for movies too.
The strong points of the movie are: Casting CG The second point often fails.Mind me, the scenarios are beautiful but there are many scenes where the animals are out of proportion. Even the bear, which is beautiful, seems to change size over time.
Having such a big budget with an excellent casting puts the blame on the director or the production. Surely Chris Weitz wasn't up o the job and the result was pretty sluggish. Given this experience I think that he really should stick to the "about a boy" and "american pie" series, leaving the transposition of books to more talented directors.
I also believe that the production is to blame since it is really easy to see that the movie it self was badly cutted to not offend anyone.