Although encumbered with the familiar banes of the large-budget fantasy film, big bland special effects and a clunky climax on a big chintzy set, Stardust still manages to be a real surprise: elegant, witty, and performed with zest, it casts Claire Danes as the bitchy but lovable “star” who falls to earth and finds herself claimed by shop-boy Charlie Cox, as a prize to impress his bitchy but unlovable object of aspiration, Sienna Miller. Based on a Neil Gaiman novel, and directed by Layer Cake’s Matthew Vaughn, the film manages for the larger part to balance a wry, even satiric take on the genre whilst keeping up the pace and refusing to surrender the thrust of his story to the atomising pressures of both comedy skits and spectacle flourishes, instead speeding on with the gossamer zip of the airship that bears the heroes through the clouds for some of the film. Fine performances help enormously, from Cox and Danes, who still stands tall amongst her generational peers; and a sharply employed supporting cast of names, including a mordant Rupert Everett, a droll Ricky Gervais, a damnably cool Peter O’Toole as a dying but still sly king, and a priceless turn by Robert De Niro in a gift of a role, as Captain Shakespeare, a sky pirate who maintains a front of ferocity and cruelty to conceal the fact he’s a cultured, cross-dressing nancy-boy. Every scene involving him and his sarcastically rowdy crew is a gas. Less inspiring is Michelle Pfeiffer’s hyped but surprisingly flat evil witch-queen.
