Coulter (Nicole Kidman: The Invasion, Happy Feet), adopts Lyra as her personal assistant - Mrs. This is refused, of course, but adventure of another kind comes calling when one of the collegeвЂ™s patrons, the sleek and sinister Mrs. Strange things are afoot: Asriel comes to Jordan to seek funding for an urgent exploratory trip to the mysterious North for reasons Lyra doesnвЂ™t understand - something to do with a substance called Dust - except to know that she wants to go along. Orphaned Lyra (an auspicious debut by 12-year-old Dakota Blue Richards) lives a mostly unfettered life in the rambling world of Jordan College at Oxford University, looked over by the gentleman scholars at the behest of one Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig: The Invasion, Casino Royale), her remote and enigmatic uncle. LyraвЂ™s daemon, Pantalaimon, morphs his form - as all daemons of children do until they вЂњsettleвЂќ on one animal shape at adolescence - so beautifully as a CGI creation that he does indeed feel like an outward manifestation of LyraвЂ™s personality, and thereвЂ™s such character in his face, particularly in his favorite form as an ermine, that it seems impossible that heвЂ™s not real.Д«ut IвЂ™m getting ahead of myself. Young Lyra lives on an Earth just slightly to the side of ours, one in which humans keep their souls on the outsides of their bodies in the form of animal familiars called вЂњdaemonsвЂќ - this is so fundamental an aspect of PullmanвЂ™s fiction, his people actually dual creatures of human-and-daemon, that if we couldnвЂ™t believe this, we couldnвЂ™t believe any of it. If things had to be a bit crammed in and other things had to be elided over, however neatly and efficiently in the process, so be it.ДЄll that said, this is a magnificent slice of cinematic fantasy, perhaps the most perfect blending of live action and CGI ever.

But this ainвЂ™t Lord of the Rings, aimed at grownup literature geeks and fantasy nerds: itвЂ™s meant to be a two-hour family film, one with a little something for everyone from eight to eighty. The Golden Compass, the movie, could have been a more leisurely three-hour symphony, one that captured visually the grounded but poetic expressiveness of PullmanвЂ™s writing. If itвЂ™s 30 minutes into the film, this must be the fun-with-Mrs.-Coulter segment, as it were. All the essential elements of the story are hereвЂ¦ they just feel a bit rushed, as if this were a touristвЂ™s perspective on the escapades of Lyra Belacqua. To be fair, screenwriter and director Chris Weitz ( About a Boy) has taken a sprawling story with a large number of players and condensed it extraordinarily well, combining characters and compressing events in such a way that the adventure is not at all diminished, nor are PullmanвЂ™s powerful underlying themes of the importance of freethought and the vitality of an inquisitive, playful soul. ItвЂ™s a bit Cliffs Notes-y, I can say as a fan of Philip PullmanвЂ™s fiction, a fan not just of the story heвЂ™s telling in his fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials but of the simple, handsome elegance of his prose too.

The meaning behind the golden compass 2