Golden Compass, The

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A darker, deeper fantasy epic than the "Rings" trilogy, "The Chronicles of Narnia" or the "Potter" films. It springs from the same British world of quasi-philosophical magic, but creates more complex villains and poses more intriguing questions. As a visual experience, it is superb. As an escapist fantasy, it is challenging.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Represents the year's biggest gamble - and it delivers the year's biggest and most ambitious fantasy.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

A demanding blend of spectacle, drama and exposition of ideas.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

If Weitz's Golden Compass feels, at times, too crammed with exposition and big set pieces, the film nonetheless works far more successfully than the first Potter pic - the leaden "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" - did translating its source material.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Weitz doesn't manage Pullman's feat of being rational and magical simultaneously. But he rapidly and intelligently opens up Pullman's world.

Chicago Tribune Tasha Robinson

It’s pure introductory adventure, meant to immerse readers in Pullman’s richly complicated fantasy universe.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

A "soft" epic, a film touching on childhood fantasies with sturdy, unwavering characters driven to evil or good. More "Harry Potter," in other words, than "Beowulf."

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

There are significant stretches of talky tedium, more than a few “huh” moments for neophytes – especially whenever anyone starts nattering on about Dust with a capital D – and the ending plays abruptly, but there’s plenty here to hang a franchise on.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

At times you feel Weitz flipping the pages and dog-earing wildly, and that's a shame: This is a movie that needs to be lengthy and discursive, the better to duck into the back alleys of its invention. A visionary is required. This director isn't one.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

One key missing element: the world in which this story takes place never feels unique. We aren't drawn into it the way we were with Middle Earth or Hogwarts. In fact, with all the airships flying around, there are times when it feels like an extension of Stardust.

Time Richard Corliss

There's something missing, beyond the iconoclastic theology, in this perfectly OK, blandly underwhelming superproduction. The movie lacks an elevating passion, a cohesive vision, a soul. It's as if The Golden Compass has misplaced its artistic compass. Somebody stole its daemon.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Ultimately satisfying and successful version of the opening volume of the celebrated "His Dark Materials" trilogy.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

The Golden Compass does manage the job of bringing Pullman's world to the screen. With luck, any future entries will try harder to get the job done right.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

An innocuous, passably entertaining effects extravaganza.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The Golden Compass is a snowbound mystical-whizbang kiddie ride that hovers somewhere between the loopy and the lugubrious.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Impressively rendered but oddly uninviting adventure.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

The film is dominated by computer-generated effects and they're most of its problem -- they don't give us anything to emotionally attach to or invest in.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Has many of the virtues of a faithful screen adaptation and many of the predictable flaws.

Premiere Deborah Day

Ultimately fails as a film in its broad strokes and inadequate scene development.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

For all the complicated backstory, weighty themes, action set pieces and fanciful production design, the film is oddly unengaging.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Disappoints with its lack of character development and convoluted storytelling.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Looks magical, seethes with elusive profundities and makes remarkably little sense, though the murkiness makes perfect sense on a shallower level.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

The Golden Compass comes close, and its originality cannot be denied, but it never quite crosses over into your heart. It stops at your eyes.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

The Golden Compass is a blatant attempt to duplicate the success of the "Harry Potter" franchise. The only thing missing is richly imagined characters, a comprehensible story line, good acting, and satisfying special effects.

Empire Olly Richards

A crushing disappointment for fans and a scuppered opportunity for a cinematic event. That the first book has been so mishandled doesn’t bode well for the (already greenlit) more complicated ones to come.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Whatever complex or interesting ideas might have been found in the source material have been watered down, skimmed over, mashed into nonsense or simply ignored.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

Not only did those so-called "demons" take the form of animals, but they actually talked!

Slate Dana Stevens

A tepid, jumbled Hollywood fable whose final message seems to amount to little more than "Follow your dreams," or worse, "Stay tuned for the sequel."

Village Voice Michelle Orange

In drawing and quartering much of the novel's intent, Weitz ends up with a film that feels not just unfinished but undone.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

The movie simply delivers too many colorfuls for its own good, none of whom establish a true emotional identity, and thus it isn't moving, it's busy. Busy, busy, busy.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The final sad joke is this: Weitz took a wonderful story about the danger of severing a soul from its otherwise empty body and did that very thing to his source.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Five minutes before The Golden Compass started, I was wondering when it was going to start. Forty minutes into it, I was wondering exactly the same thing.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Me, I just think it blows. What does it matter if you spend millions on a movie - love the talking, battling bears! - if the effects are cheesy, the story runs off on tangents and after watching the movie fail utterly to be the next Lord of the Rings, you just want to go home.