For somewhat obscure reasons, "The Golden Compass," even before its opening, has already become an object of controversy. Although some prelates and religious figures apparently approve of the film, a lay organization called the Catholic League has launched a proleptic campaign against it, claiming it constitutes an attack on Christianity, specifically Roman Catholicism. (In the interests of full disclosure, I have not read the books that inspire the film, and I am, incidentally, a Roman Catholic.) The producers and distributors of the movie should of course be delighted: you can't buy that kind of publicity.

In reality, the film in no way justifies the sorts of charges made against it; instead of an attack on traditional Christianity, it actually celebrates some perfectly admirable qualities, now relatively rare in America, like independence, intelligence, and above all, courage. Rather than a work of godless paganism, it appears perfectly appropriate to a time in which films like "The Lord of the Rings," "The Chronicles of Narnia," and the "Harry Potter" flicks earn high praise and big bucks. Like those movies, it also resembles the sorts of fantasy that flourished around the turn of the last century, by writers as varied as Jules Verne, Lewis Carroll, and H. G. Wells.

In presenting a series of adventures in a parallel universe much like our own world, the movie employs many of the odd combinations of subjects and styles of its contemporaries, some of which also appear in those works of a hundred or more years ago. It establishes a world based on a neo-Gothic acceptance of magic and the supernatural, along with a quaintly Victorian vision of such matters as language, class, and technology. That world, known as Brytain, succeeds mostly by means of a remarkable array of stunning special effects, the necessary equipment of any holiday blockbuster.

The complicated story, which proceeds from one adventure to another in a series of obliquely distracting maneuvers, involves the effort of a young girl named Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards) to find some children kidnapped by a mysterious group called the Gobblers, and a larger quest to save both her world and ours. An evil woman named Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman), connected both to the Gobblers and to a ruling body called the Magisterium, attempts to prevent Lyra's quest and also acquire the Golden Compass of the title, a mechanism that enables Lyra to see the future and discover the truth.

In Lyra's world, people's souls do not reside within their bodies, but accompany them in the form of talking animals, know as daemons, which means every character in the movie appears with a companion - a snake, a monkey, a hawk, a jackrabbit, a leopard, etc. While adult daemons express the souls of their humans, children's shift shape constantly, which for Lyra means that her ferret changes into a butterfly, a bird, a cat, and others; Mrs. Coulter, for some unclear reasons, plans to take away all the children's daemons, and thus, presumably, possess their souls.

The wizardry that creates these companions merges them seamlessly with the characters and action throughout the movie, a really spectacular accomplishment that deserves a good deal of admiration. The movie also features numerous other examples of the magic of the cinema, especially a gigantic talking polar bear named Iorek Byrnison, who wears armor made from "sky iron" and transports Lyra over the frozen wastes of the North Pole. The most attractive devices in the film, however, derive from its ancestors of a century ago, chiefly a quaint Victorian sensibility in costume and interior decor, and a technology that uses complicated instruments of gleaming brass and vessels that sail the seas and skies very like the balloons, submarines, and time machines of Verne and Wells.

Ultimately, that contemporary and ancient technology provides virtually all the entertainment in "The Golden Compass," which despite its perfectly worthy themes suffers from an overabundance of silliness in its plot, quaintness in its sets, and cuteness in its principals. The child actors are mostly insufferable, the adults steadfastly oversimplified, while all that whimsy congeals like cooling bacon grease.

The Golden Compass

(PG-13), directed by Chris Weitz

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