The Golden Compass....Sucked a bit.
I'm a big fan of the book(s), so I'm probably biased, but it seems to me you're screwed either way with this movie. People who have read the book(s) will be extremely frustrated with how the themes and characters have been thoroughly watered down. People who haven't will have a hard time figuring out what the Hell is going on and why these people are running all over the place and fighting and delivering ultimatums for no good reason. All of this backed by a god awful score. And just try to listen to the song over the closing credits without bursting into laughter or stuffing cotton in your ears.
It's clear to see New Line wanted another "Lord of the Rings," but Chris Weitz is no Peter Jackson. Without that strong, uncompromising vision, you end of with a wishy-washy test-marketed mess that tries to appeal to everyone (including wary religious types who weren't going to show up anyway) but ends up appealing to no one.
There are some good things: The film is well cast and most of the actors do a good job, particularly Dakota Blue Richards, who plays the lead. The effects and art design are great, and the action sequences (particularly the bear fight and the battle outside Bolvangar) work quite well. They also managed to pull off the tricky convention of daemons (people's souls represented by animals outside their bodies) quite effectively.
Perhaps the most shocking and disappointing change for fans of the book will be the ending. They basically lop off the last five or six chapters of the book so as to create a happier, more ambiguous ending. Let me be clear: IT'S AWFUL. It betrays the most basic elements of the original story and really weakens the whole franchise. Big mistake, especially since, up until two months ago, the film ended the same way it does in the book. Studio execs obviously got nervous about ending the film on a dark note and flinched. Booo.
People scoffed when each Lord of the Rings film came in at 3+ hours, but once you saw them, you realized that time was necessary to establish characters, plot, and motivation without feeling like you were on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride ("Okay, here's this, and now this, and now they're going to go over here and fight these guys, and WHOA! There's a big 'ol bear! Now here's another guy. They fight. Moving on..."). Hell, the extended editions of those movies pushed 4 hours, and they were even better. This was a film that clearly needed more time (interestingly, Weitz's first version of the script WAS three hours long and was, according to those who have read it, superior to what ended up on the screen). Maybe if they recut this for an extended DVD edition it would be improved. But I don't think that would fix all of its problems.