Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

A darker, deeper fantasy epic than the "Rings" trilogy, "The Chronicles of Narnia" or the "Potter" films. It springs from the same British world of quasi-philosophical magic, but creates more complex villains and poses more intriguing questions. As a visual experience, it is superb. As an escapist fantasy, it is challenging.

New York Daily News by Jack Mathews

Represents the year's biggest gamble - and it delivers the year's biggest and most ambitious fantasy.

Chicago Tribune

It’s pure introductory adventure, meant to immerse readers in Pullman’s richly complicated fantasy universe.

Baltimore Sun by Michael Sragow

Weitz doesn't manage Pullman's feat of being rational and magical simultaneously. But he rapidly and intelligently opens up Pullman's world.

Philadelphia Inquirer by Steven Rea

If Weitz's Golden Compass feels, at times, too crammed with exposition and big set pieces, the film nonetheless works far more successfully than the first Potter pic - the leaden "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" - did translating its source material.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Liam Lacey

A demanding blend of spectacle, drama and exposition of ideas.

Chicago Tribune by Tasha Robinson

It’s pure introductory adventure, meant to immerse readers in Pullman’s richly complicated fantasy universe.

The Hollywood Reporter by Kirk Honeycutt

A "soft" epic, a film touching on childhood fantasies with sturdy, unwavering characters driven to evil or good. More "Harry Potter," in other words, than "Beowulf."

Austin Chronicle by Kimberley Jones

There are significant stretches of talky tedium, more than a few “huh” moments for neophytes – especially whenever anyone starts nattering on about Dust with a capital D – and the ending plays abruptly, but there’s plenty here to hang a franchise on.

ReelViews by James Berardinelli

One key missing element: the world in which this story takes place never feels unique. We aren't drawn into it the way we were with Middle Earth or Hogwarts. In fact, with all the airships flying around, there are times when it feels like an extension of Stardust.

Boston Globe by Ty Burr

At times you feel Weitz flipping the pages and dog-earing wildly, and that's a shame: This is a movie that needs to be lengthy and discursive, the better to duck into the back alleys of its invention. A visionary is required. This director isn't one.

The A.V. Club by Keith Phipps

The Golden Compass does manage the job of bringing Pullman's world to the screen. With luck, any future entries will try harder to get the job done right.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Paula Nechak

The film is dominated by computer-generated effects and they're most of its problem -- they don't give us anything to emotionally attach to or invest in.

Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman

The Golden Compass is a snowbound mystical-whizbang kiddie ride that hovers somewhere between the loopy and the lugubrious.

Variety by Todd McCarthy

Impressively rendered but oddly uninviting adventure.

Washington Post by Stephen Hunter

The movie simply delivers too many colorfuls for its own good, none of whom establish a true emotional identity, and thus it isn't moving, it's busy. Busy, busy, busy.

Village Voice

In drawing and quartering much of the novel's intent, Weitz ends up with a film that feels not just unfinished but undone.