Stardust Is A Good Old Fashioned Fantasy Romp And A Highly Entertaining One At That!

Among his numerous hallmarks as a director, Matthew Vaughn loves to play fast and loose with the comic books and graphic novels he adapts into movies. More often than not, Vaughn will basically just run with the core concept of what he's adapting into a film to better suit his own interests and desires most notably in turning Mark Millar's grim Kingsman graphic novel into a breezy Bond homage. Even X-Men: First Class, his feature most faithful to its source material, took liberties with what it was adapting and this tendency of Vaughn's is on full display in his first ever directorial effort, Stardust, an adaptation of a Neil Gaiman graphic novel that's far more family-friendly than its source material.

High School Musical 2 Hits Too Many Sour Notes To Live Up To It's Potential

It was always gonna be difficult to pull off a High School Musical sequel. The whole point of the first movie was that it embraced corny storytelling so heavily that it might as well have swept up that type of storytelling in a big old bear hug. Adhering to this sort of storytelling means you've wrapped up all the characters stories in tidy little bows at the end so that the viewer believes they go on to live happily ever after. How exactly do you create further adventures for Troy Bolton and his fellow wildcats then, especially when you have further issues like trying to create a premise that still feels like it's a High School Musical production without just coming off as a weak retread of its predecessor?

Superbad? More Like SuperGreat!

Sure, we all know who Jonah Hill and Michael Cera are today but ten years ago this very month, each of them got to headline their very first (but certainly not their last) motion picture with the Greg Mottola-directed feature Superbad. Neither came from out of nowhere of course since Cera had done Arrested Development for three seasons and Hill had been a character actor in a couple of comedies, but neither one were movie stars until Superbad came along and rocketed them both to new levels of fame. In my first time ever viewing of Superbad, I was delighted to see that the initial breakthrough movie for these two wasn't just a worthy start for two talented actors but may be one of the strongest movies either of them has ever appeared in.