Last night we sat down as a family to watch "The Golden Compass" on DVD.

The film started with one of those "It was the times of the Bingly Bong and the Tookah Hoo had fallen into the hands of the Wankesterium" kind of narratives, so I knew what we were in store for.  I had forgotten it was a Philip Pullman book  (I tried reading one of the Dark Materials books once... I think I threw it out the window).

The action began with people running around, each with some kind of talking animal next to them/above them/stuck on them.... called their demons.... oh, please, I was thinking up (REALLY BAD) poetry and stories like that when I was an eejit (I really was an awful drip) thirteen-year-old....This film was a load of drivel, nonsense, poppycock and piffle.  And not because it was a children's story.  Children's stories should be as good as growed-ups'.   I find these stories of "other worlds" by JRR Tolkien, JK Rowling (listen, when Gordon Brown said the other day that JK was one of our greatest authors, I know he had to say SOMETHING because she is a friend of his and she'd just given the party a million quid, but come off it Gordon...one of our greatest authors?), CS Lewis, P Pullman et al so damned tiresome, don't you?  

When something is a complete fantasy, it feels like it's too easy to tell the story, getting bogged down with silly magical objects and characters with spiritty names to get the story to move from the start to the finish. The Dingly Dangly witch from the lake of the HHHHhhhhhh will have a magic pixie on a stick to help them get to the Hoofly Maaaaachchchchch Island with some godawful superimposed floaty spirituality in the shape of someone who looks like Tilda Swinton (or sometimes, Tilda Swinton) talking in hushy hushy tones, with floaty hair and a diaphanous dress to appeal to the terminally shallow and not particularly interesting thirteen-year-old girls of this world.   Twaddle.

Just saying, like. 

You know I'm right.  And I'm expecting the dolphin crowd in.  

Comments (8)

8 Wednesday, 01 October 2008 20:13

Unabashed Girly-Girl

HAHAHAHAAAAAA! Hilarity abounds.

Alright, I can definitely see your point.

But what about Madeline L'Engle (A Wrinkle in Time series) and Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game series)? I'm curious -- what type of children's book do you like, then?

7 Tuesday, 30 September 2008 13:27

Ludmilla

Oh you're so right - and brave for coming out of the anti-Harry wardrobe...Tolkein & Rowling are mindblowingly sphinter-tightening with all their Tweedly, Dumbly characters.

Tove Jansson is the only one who can write - and beautifully illustrate - children's stories without patronising - and there are maps at the front too...check out Moominpapa at Sea, the greatest (and deepest) book ever written...Kafka bog off...

6 Tuesday, 30 September 2008 12:52

ana

You best stay away from my book when it comes out then.

Though there really are no fairies and, technically, no children either... but there are a couple of very mattelizable characters... so...

Oh, and speaking of fairies... Have you ever read Raymond Feist's Faerie Tale? Made me fall in love with the nasty little buggers all over again.

As for Pullman, the only thing I thought when I read the books was that he was annoyingly trying way too hard to make it MEANINGFUL, like you know "it's not just fantasy, it's an allegory for so and so, see, see, I'm a serious writer!". Bah!

5 Tuesday, 30 September 2008 12:18

Minx

Some of us write fantasy without the fucking fairies!

4 Tuesday, 30 September 2008 00:59

\n This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ' target='_blank'>Renato

May the dark goblins storm your drawers and sacrifice all your socks to their evil mole deity. That's all I'm wishing you.

3 Monday, 29 September 2008 16:55

Jess

I've got to say when I saw the film I found the animals extreeeemely annoying and wished they would die, or something. By the end of the film I'd got used to them but it didn't make it any easier.

2 Sunday, 28 September 2008 23:07

lucy

yeah, I toyed with including Terry Pratchett.... but he doesn't take discworld seriously enough for me to be horrid about him.

best map at front of book:... winnie thur pooh and the hundred acre wood.

1 Sunday, 28 September 2008 22:11

problemchildbride

On the other hand though, there's Terry Pratchett. He's a genre unto himself, mind you.

I don't like all these Sword of Spigglywig or Cape of Kerfuffle sorts of stories but from when I was wee I've always liked books with maps at the front. Serious fantasy is too earnest, slapping you upside the head with various blunt moral objectives. But funny fantasy, I like.

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