Lots of different concepts hastily introduced make it hard to adjust to the alien world presented in this movie for those who have not read the book it is based upon. The movie follows a twelve-year-old girl, Lyra (a very likable Dakota Blue Richards), who escapes from the cool and scary Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman) and tries to find her friend Roger who has apparently been taken by the “Gobblers”. Along the way she discovers what the Gobblers are and what they and Mrs. Coulter and the ruling Magisterium are up to. The story is set in a parallel world where everyone has a soul existing as a talking animal that accompanies you, called a daemon. That creates some nice storytelling possibilities, and it also turns out to be central to the evil designs of the Magisterium who also appear to be very interested in “dust” which is not the same thing at all as dust in our world.

While I could get used to daemons and a race of talking ice bears, the whole context and feel of the world is not developed enough at the beginning of the movie. I felt disconnected from what was going on because I didn’t know enough about the rules of the game. The movie is relatively short for the first in what might be a fantasy trilogy, coming in under two hours. Some additional time was desperately needed up front to help establish what life is like in this world and who and what the Magisterium are and what dust is and why Lyra is safe in Jordan college and why everyone is so afraid of Lord Asriel’s photo of a man channeling dust near the north pole. At the end of the movie it can be pieced together, but while it’s unfolding there are too many unfamiliar elements happening all at once to make it possible to care as much about them as the characters in the movie do.

There was some fuss about a boycott of this movie for allegedly having anti-Christian themes. I haven’t read the book, but it never would have occurred to me that there were any religious aspects to this movie one way or the other had I not heard about the boycott effort.