With all the build-up surrounding the release of the film, from the howling protests of Christian groups to the blunt force trauma of New Line Cinema's non-stop marketing campaign, it's hard to tell what I really expected from the picture, but I can tell you that for the most part, I didn't get it.

At the heart of the film's problems is its inability to settle on one main plotline. Now, a movie of this scope is bound to have a couple of subplots anyway, but the two main subplots in The Golden Compass are no more "sub" than what passes for the main plot. Asrael's determination to discover the full nature of Dust is at first presented as the film's main focus, but then come the Gobblers, a shadowy group of thugs employed by the Magisterium to kidnap various children (how they're selected, the audience is never told) for an ominous and very nonspecific-sounding Experiment; kids vanish and are never seen again. We find out more as that storyline unfolds, but it does so rather slowly because the third storyline in the film takes shape at about the same time: the ice bear Iorek (voiced by Ian McKellen) is hired, as it were, by Lyra to help her brave the dangers of the icy north. But Iorek's own story comes to the forefront -- how he fell in battle and was disgraced enough to be banished -- and his quest to reclaim the throne that should have been his takes center stage for the majority of the second act.

And as quickly as you can fire off rounds from a gun, the characters shift from one plot to the next, changing objectives and giving the audience plenty of great visuals to look at and very little story to grab onto for very long. It's not difficult to follow, it just reeks of the mindset that there are more to come in the series, and that's a definite misstep, especially in today's finicky, unpredictable cinematic market.

Much of the film's own mythology is alluded to but never realized; it would have been nice, also, if the process of reading the golden compass was even halfway explained to the audience. Dust itself was in the forefront of every character's mind early on and then vanished like so much... well, dust, probably (again) the result of the filmmakers' franchising aspirations. Too much was left to the audience's imagination, and in alluding to so much unexplained mythology, they ask us to take too much on faith as well (ironic, if you really think about it).

The movie isn't short on stars, with Sam Elliott, Kathy Bates, Christopher Lee, Kristen Scott Thomas, and Eva Green making appearances or lending voice talents to daemons. It's just not as even or cohesive as what The Chronicles of Narnia or the seriously overrated Lord of the Rings trilogy brought to the table, and because it obviously aspires to rise to the level of those franchises, I don't think the comparison is out of line. Let's hope, if a second film materializes, the filmmakers give the story a chance to work its magic instead of expecting the audience to do it for them.

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