Much as the first two adaptations of the Harry Potter books, the producers of The Golden Compass played their selection of a director a bit too safe. Chris Weitz' adaptation is a sadly wasted opportunity. It misses every nuance that made the book mysterious, seeks to over-explain every subtlety the book allowed to slowly unfold. It re-arranges the order of the story, weakening what it has to say, and wastes time in the manufacture of tension that should have been spent settling into the world itself.

From the opening scene of the film (which attempts to explain all the mysteries of Pullman's world in one daft voiceover) this telling employs the grace of a rusted blade being pulled over a chalkboard. The wonder of the books was that you slowly learn what a daemon is, how it is connected to its host. You slowly learn what is dust, and what is its relation to the compass and to life. To come right out and *say* these things before even introducing a character is a gross error, and one that sets the pace for the entire film to fail miserably.

Yes, there are time limits in film. There were surely producers shouting temporal commands ("keep the final cut under two hours") that made the film difficult to make. But there were visual choices made that would have taken no time to implement, as they are seen in backdrop. Two examples:

- London, fascinating in its written similarity to the real world, is textured and recognizable. Yet in the film, it's neither called "London" nor is it recognizable as such.

- The portrayal of the bears in the book was also fascinating, their king Ragnar a demented kind of bear who wants to be human. The culture and kingdom he creates is one of awkward gold that is out of sync with the brutality of what a bear is. This significance and texture is completely lost in the film.

Furthermore, what 2 hours the producers did allot the telling were squandered away on ridiculous scenes completely unecessary to the telling of the story, such as five minutes for Lyra to walk over an ice bridge, or ridiculously heavy-handed expositions of church officials saying things action had already revealed, or long computer-generated journeys into the compass as it revealed the truth.

Yuck. Let us only hope that Hossein Amini's adaptation of the next book has a better grasp of what the book is *about*.