Stardust
Starring Claire Danes, Charlie Cox, and Michelle Pfeiffer. Paramount Home Video, 2007. Rated PG-13. Available online at Amazon.com.

Falling stars. Evil witches. Fairy tale princes and princesses. It's the stuff that dreams - and wonderful fantasy tales - are made of.

Stardust, a fantasy-comedy-romance starring the luminous Claire Danes, is one of the most delightful, fun, and entertaining movies to come out in a long time. Not since 1987's The Princess Bride, in fact, have I been so smitten with a tale; not since Broadway's Into the Woods have I been so charmed by a fairy tale story. And yet here comes Stardust, fulfilling all of my own personal ideas as to what a fantasy tale should be: whimsical, clever, funny, romantic, and above all else, full of heart.

Based on the book of the same name by award-winning fantasy author Neil Gaiman, Stardust stars Claire Danes as Yvaine, a star who is knocked out of the sky and comes crashing down to earth. Charlie Cox plays Tristan Thorn, a young man from a small village who sets out to capture the fallen star and bring it back as a way to woo his beloved, Victoria (Sienna Miller). When he arrives to the landing location of the star, however, he is as surprised and disgruntled that the star is an actual woman as Yvaine is to have been knocked from the heavens. Yvaine has been injured from her fall and so they have little choice but to agree to disagree: she will help him get his true love, if he helps her find a way to get back to her place in the sky. Together, they then set out on a fantastic journey filled with evil witches (led by the fabulous Michelle Pfeiffer), greedy princes (including Rupert Everett as Secundus and Mark Strong as Septimus), and a cross-dressing pirate captain (Robert De Niro). Because little do Yvaine and Tristan know - but just about everyone wants to get their hands on the fallen star.

Stardust is not only a fun adventure story, but it also features a damsel in distress who really isn't a poor little damsel at all. While the story is, sure, still a standard fairy tale, the main female characters in the show - especially Dane's character, Yvaine - are strong and independently minded. Yvaine doesn't take any crap from anyone; Pfeiffer's character, the witch Lamia, is fierce and determined; and even Sienna Miller's bitchy character, Victoria, ends up breaking a few clichés along the way. In short, even though the story follows many conventional gender stereotypes so typical of fairy tales, Gaiman's story has many surprises along the way for those expecting standard "woe is me" female fare. And the women cast in these roles seem to overcome the story itself - so full they are of depth and dimension. Danes, in particular, practically dares the viewers to view her as a weak character; she is the perpetual smartass in the role, always determined to first lean upon herself rather than ask for assistance from anyone else. Yet she manages to excude an absolutely magnetic on screen personality that makes you want to just give her a big hug.

With that said, there was one downfall to Stardust, in my mind, and that was Robert De Niro's character, Captain Shakespeare. Whereas a cross-dressing captain pretending to me much meaner than he actually is, is quite funny at first, when it comes right down to it, it was clear as a viewer that once the director and producers got a hold of De Niro for the role, they tried to focus the show on him and his antics - rather than keep moving the story along. Such moves happen incredibly often in Hollywood; when a big name is slated to play a cameo role, suddenly someone decides to stretch the cameo out into its own separate storyline. Here, De Niro is funny and a bit charming at first... but it wears old after a while, especially when it becomes clear that mostly there just for window dressing; his character doesn't do too much to help move the story along. And after reading the book (which I ran out and picked up after seeing the film), I learned that Captain Shakespeare was barely a glimmer in the original story - which certainly backed up my assumptions that De Niro's role was expanded as an attempt at some big name fluff.

That certainly didn't ruin the movie for me at all, though; Stardust has quickly become one of my favorite films of 2007, if not of all time. It's a quirky, uplifting, heartwarming, and enchanting story that I'm sure I'll come back to time and time again.

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