Stardust

"Are the stars looking back at us?" is the question posed by narrator Ian McKellen in Matthew Vaughn's film based on the novel by Neil Gaiman. If the stars caught a glimpse of this movie I imagine they would look away. This badly executed fantasy tale of a fallen star, a girl named Yvaine (Claire Danes), and a young man named Tristran (Charlie Cox) actually had potential to be enjoyable.
Tristran is in love with Victoria (Sienna Miller) who is set to marry the snobby Humphrey, unless Tristran can capture the star they saw fall from the sky. When Tristran discovers that the star is in fact Yvaine he does what any well-adjusted upstanding citizen would do. He chains her to himself to return her to Victoria as a birthday present. (I must remember that.) Along the way they get into all sorts of adventures with the likes of conniving brothers competing for the crown, a witch (Michelle Pfeiffer), and a sky pirate (Robert De Niro).
It comes across very dorkily for the most part. Danes and Cox do their best but there's little they can do with the material. Peter O'Toole has a great scene early on, but his character is on his death bed so, yeah, Pete doesn't stick around for long. Ricky Gervais livens things up at around the halfway point, but it's not enough to overcome many failed attempts at humor, and De Niro is just embarrassing here. It's a cringe-inducing performance by one of the greatest actors to ever grace the screen.
I finally gave up on this movie with about 20 minutes to go. They'd already had one ending and I figured it had about four more to go. I just didn't care. So out of fairness I won't give this a number rating, because I don't know, maybe it becomes "Casablanca" in the last twenty minutes. But I'm guessing that it was probably still "Stardust." Stay far away from this one.