Customer Ratings & Reviews

I would recommend this movie to any parent that has kids 5 and over to see is a great movie can't wait for part 2 to see it

This movie is a cute movie for children. It was not scary f or them and they have watched it many times since

An entertaining movie, maybe not one of the best, but still fun for the whole family. Good actors, not matched well to the characters, but still pretty good.

I RECOMMEND THIS. I BOUGHT IT FOR MY 2 AUTISTIC GRANDSONS, AND REALLY WAS SURPRISED. TOTALLY THUMBS UP!

Neoclassic family film! A must see with a maximum polar bear fight.

Excellent movie. Have seen it several times. Love this movie. Highly recommend.

Really like the movie. Goes good with anyone's movie collection.

I like the movie, my kids didn't so I bought it for me! It was a good price for the kind of movie it is and the fact that it is a blu ray.

I had not seen this in a long while and wanted to see it again. The availability of it in bargain rack meant I could see it again.

This movie had so much imagination in it. Quite an adventure.

The movie and special effects are great but the ending is like sudden

We all loved the golden compass. Great movie for the whole family

This is a great watch for a family to enjoy together.

This is really a nice family movie kids enjoyed watching it

Great intriguing family movie, perfect plot and all.

My son loves this movie. It's actually pretty good cast. I thought there was suppose to be a sequel.

Movie has fun cgi and action scenes but storyline is a bit hard to follow. If you are not paying attention you might lose the whole plot.

I read the original customer review and decided against buying this movie. I should have trusted my instincts and bought it anyway. I loved it! The movie has a wonderful story to it, though it is incomplete, and great visual effects to make it "come to life". I had heard from others and reading the original review, made this movie out to be "evil" with them "killing off God" at the end. This is simply untrue. Don't want to spoil too much of the movie but... This is a fictional FANTASY tale of a parallel world with differences in how things are. In the first lines of the movie says there are many different worlds....some like yours where your souls are on the inside and some like mine...where our souls are on the outside and take other forms....or something like that. The "demon animals" are simply what their world calls their souls. You would not expect words to have the same meaning in a different world...Did none of you watch Lord of the Rings?? And the "girl who does not seem to be disturbed in the end when she helps to kill a great amount of people"....come on...this is the classic story of "good triumphs over evil" and the "people" at the end were created, not real. I was very pleased with this movie except that the end did not finish the story...maybe they are making sequal...but I do intend to buy it.

Here's a film that should be much bigger and bolder than it turned out to be. Released by the now-defunct New Line in the wake of said studio's mammoth success story that was "The Lord of the Rings," Chris Weitz's "The Golden Compass" was obviously engineered to be the heir apparent to Peter Jackson's landmark fantasy franchise (the original teaser trailer began with a golden ring, tossed up into the air, transforming into the golden compass). But despite the best intentions of all involved, "The Golden Compass" fails to capture the qualities of its wonderful source material. What could have been a daring, thought-provoking, and thematically interesting cinematic experience instead devolves into a nice-looking but ultimately flat screen journey. The frustrating part is that there's a good movie in here somewhere. Weitz obviously has the chops to elicit strong performances all around, the script is tight, the cinematography is gorgeous, and the effects are generally impressive - if not wholly convincing. The film also gets bonus points for the pitch-perfect casting of Sam Elliott. But "The Golden Compass" ultimately feels like a product of compromise. The tone of the film is all over the place, several characters lack depth, the dialogue is spotty and often a bit too on the nose, and then there's the ending - it's a tragedy that, despite having been filmed, the conclusion was both left off the film entirely and out of the special features section of the Blu as well. The novel's ending, if included, would have provided the kind of strong, emotional punch that the rest of the film too often lacked. C'est la vie. As far as the Blu-ray set itself: impressive package. Iorek's roar will threaten to shatter your windows and the picture is as clear as when I saw it on the big screen some 5 or 6 years ago. The supplementary package is equally great, with in-depth featurettes on everything from Pullman's conception of the story to the casting of Lyra to the special effects wizardry required to create an admirably convincing fantasy world. A little less compromise and a little more fine-tuning, and "The Golden Compass" may well have been the satisfying blockbuster New Line hoped it would be. Instead, it now sits as one of many post-LOTR misfires with few distinguishing characteristics of its own and a whole lot of potential unrealized.

Philip Pullman is one of the great fantasy writers whose time may have come. The hero of this book is a young girl who must fight for the very souls of the people of her world. This is not a pink spun sugar tale of how wonderful and blissful childhood is. The adults in power turn out to not be the protectors but those who must be defeated if the world is not to lose the essence of their being - their souls which are actualized as their companions in animal form. It is a story that should make anyone watching it take pause and think about the difference between spirituality and the bureaucracy of 'religion'. This is not anti religion but instead speaks against those who would misuse religion to gain power and destroy the soul of religion in doing so.