Now I've not read the books, so I won't be able to tell you how good an adaptation of the actual book this is, but what I saw was as brilliant a piece of storytelling as any that I've ever seen on screen. As both director and screenwriter Chris Weitz has done a masterful job of making sure that the movie succeeds as a stand-alone work, so those of us who haven't read the books never feel like we're missing information. While there are points in the movie where you may wonder, now why is so and so doing this, you're never left hanging and an explanation will eventually be given. In fact one of the things that impressed me most about Mr. Weitz's direction and storytelling was his timing. He doles out the information that the story needs to progress in ways that don't interrupt the flow of the action but that still gives us the opportunity to catch our breath and integrate what he's told us into our understanding of what's going on.

In this way he gives us a slight edge on his main character, Lyra Belacqua, when it comes to knowing what's happening, but only in a general way. For instance we know that the people who run the world, The Magisterium, have nasty plans in store for people - especially children - but we don't find out the details until Lyra does. It's a standard technique for storytelling in movies, but he's done it so well here that it builds the suspense and develops the plot at a rate of speed that strikes the perfect balance between credibility and maintaining tension.

Of course this movie is going to live and die based on the performance delivered by whoever is cast in the central role of the lead character Lyra Belacqua. Once you see Dakota Blue Richards in the role, you won't be able to imagine another person playing her. Culled from a cattle call that saw them audition 10,000 young women across England, Dakota doesn't strike a wrong note ever in her performance. It's hard to believe that she had no professional acting experience prior to this movie considering the range of emotions she's called on to display, and how well she's coped with working with computer generated image (CGI) characters.

Two of the characters Dakota has to spend most of her time on screen with are CGI creations — her personal Daemon, Pantalaimon (the voice of Freddie Highmore) and the armoured bear Iorek Byrnison (the voice of Ian McKellen). What look like perfectly natural conversations and interactions in the final product on screen were anything but during the shooting process. At times the young actor would be acting out a scene with a green blob of a puppet, or talking to a blank wall. It doesn't seem to have made the slightest bit of difference to her though, whether she was working with a live person or a puppet as she carries off every scene she is in with equal aplomb.