Stardust
Before seeing Stardust, I read a review somewhere that referred to it as "The Princess Bride meets Baron Munchausen." That, for my money, would be a great movie. A movie that in no way resembles the one I saw.
To begin with, Stardust is just a terrible film. The plot is meandering, nonsensical, and absurd in a completely non-fun way, the acting is just all-around bad, and the dialogue is inane at best. It has none of The Princess Bride's self-respecting cheeky humor and none of Munchausen's maniacal glee. One of the friends I saw the film with said he would have really liked, if he were 7. I doubt even that.
Aside from general badness, Stardust does a spectacularly terrible job with both gender and race. Race is just a non-starter--it's an all-white movie, period. And while there may be an excuse for that in the parts that are set in Victorian England, the majority of the film is set in a magical kingdom, so it would hardly have been a stretch to employee some non-white actors. That would imply a social conscience, however, and this movie definitely lacks that.
Gender in Stardust is a study in typicality, with heavy use of stereotypes. Basically, there are four female characters, two "good," two "bad." On the good side, you have protagonist Tristan's (Charlie Cox) long-suffering princess-turned-slave mother, Una (Kate Magowan) and Claire Danes' Yvaine, the film's main female character, who is a fallen star. Oh, Angela Chase, how far you have fallen indeed. Una doesn't get to do much beyond copulate unexplainably with Tristan's father (played by Ben Barnes in his youth and Nathaniel Parker in his middle age) and get bossed around by her witch-mistress. Yvaine, though, is the real disappointment. Though she is a centuries-old supernatural being, she has no powers and no sense, and spends the entire film being rescued and taken care of and doing no small amount of complaining. Her sole self-motivated action is to break into ridiculous shiny light at the movie's end, and even then she clearly states that it is only her great love for Tristan that allows her to do it. Seriously. And without a speck of irony intended.
As terrible as Yvaine is, though, the "bad" female characters are even worse. First we meet Victoria, played by Sienna Miller. For no particular reason, Tristan is in love with Victoria and goes on a dangerous mission to find a fallen star in order to prove this love. Victoria is spoiled, shallow, immature, and selfish, and the film offers her no chance to be anything else. She gets a big 0 in the way of character development or growth of any time, and ends up to be the butt of the joke.
Then there's the very worst part, Michelle Pfeiffer's Lamia. Lamia is the self-appointed leader of three very very old sister witches, who are after Yvaine because her heart gives them youth and beauty. Yes, that's right, youth and beauty motivate the villainess, and she is willing to destroy another woman (or star, I guess) to get it. Shocking, isn't it? Never saw that coming. Particularly not juxtaposed with the villain, Prince Septimus (Mark Strong), who is also after Yvaine, but in search not of youth and beauty, but power. So women are motivated by youth and beauty, men by power. Novel. Add in a boatload of joke's made at the elderly woman's expense (she gets age spots! her hair falls out! her boobs sag! laugh riot!) and you pretty much have the definition of one-star typicality.
Some of the folks I saw this film with felt it was redeemed, if momentarily, by Robert DeNiro's performance. Honestly, it didn't do much for me--I thought his drag routine was tired, if not homophobic. The only redeeming thing I saw was David Kelly (also the best part of Tim Burton's disastrous Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) in a small role as the wall guard. Oh, and the death by ferrets. Neither of those things, however, equates to a reason to actually see this film. I recommend you don't.
Other commentary:
- Stardust on Wavemaid's LiveJournal, responses to Grace's review are in the comments
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I was so hoping that in a fantasy movie with magic and swashbuckling, the women would get to do something active and fun. Ah well.
I'm with you one hundred percent on this. This is a movie that made me sad rather than angry, because I loved all the impossible humor and over-the-top characterization. It made me sad to think about what a great film it could've been if it'd had people of color and actual bad-ass women in it. It's sad to think what we missed out on.
Come to think of it, not one of the women liked any of the others (until the mom and Yvaine met at the end), but Tristan had a good relationship with his father and Captain Shakespeare. The guys had way more solidarity than the girls. And that's how it always is in these white male films.
I agree that the crossdressing was borderline homophobic (even though in a different, queerer context it might have been funny), but the reaction of the crew when it all came out (so to speak) kind of made up for that. I might have just been stretching for something positive, though.
Not that I am letting the film makers off the hook, but I wonder if the wretchedness of the movie was due to the film adaptation, or to the source material itself.
And really, I have always wondered what do you do about that sort of tug-of-war. If you violate too much of the book then people who loved the book will despise the changes. If you don't, people who don't love the book may despise the film. Harry Potter suffers for this I think, the more tweaks directors et all make, the more non-Harry fans are happy. But when the films are pretty faithful (like the first couple), then the fans are happy and the non-fans are bored - generally that is, I know I made some broad strokes there! :)
But while Neil Gaiman is heralded as one of the great comic books writers of our time, from the little I know about him, his work doesn't seem to strike me as being very heroine-content friendly, in terms of female or people of color portrayals; but don't quote me since I haven't read him in depth.
I remember reading the synopsis of this and simply cringing. BUT, I was still thinking about it since it was sci fi I thought maybe....
So thanks for the tip! If I see this at all, it will be on video.
You know what I don't understand, is why you would even give this one star. Van Helsing wasn't that bad, but you give that zero stars and this one! I mean really, Stardust sucked. Nothing good about the women except Yvainne glowing in the end, and that wasn't that great either.
OK, you're bang on about the ridiculousness of the roles given to the women in this film. I kept expecting Yvaine to do something, and it never really happened. Unfortunately typical, as you mentioned.
That being said, I really enjoyed Robert DeNiro's performance. While it may have been a bit over the top at times, I think he managed to be funny in a role that was clearly comic relief, without being insensitive or offensive. Tho joke wasn't on the fact that he enjoyed dressing in drag and may have been homosexual, but rather over the lengths he took to hide it from the crew. As mentioned by a commenter, the reactions of the crew when he was "discovered" was quite refreshing.
@d: While I have not actually read the original book Stardust, I think you may be being a bit harsh to Gaiman. I would recommend Neverwhere for a book of his that is entertaining and (in my opinion) HC-friendly. Apparently there was a BBC film adaptation, but i have not been able to track it down...