FAIRY tales started out as allegories loaded with political innuendo, most definitely not for children. The characters and plots became so popular . . . and worked so well without their (Matthew Vaughn):

Charlie Cox, Claire Danes, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert de Niro, Sienna Miller, Ricky Gervais, David Kelly.

Running time: 125 mins subversive subtext . . . that over centuries children appropriated them. Adults, the original context of the fairy tales long forgotten, consigned them to the nursery. Neil Gaiman, inspired by Angela Carter's short stories The Bloody Chamber . . . one of which was the source for Neil Jordan's dark fantasy The Company of Wolves . . . reclaimed the genre with his 1997 DC Comics book Stardust, a cross between The Princess Bride and Terry Gilliam's The Time Bandits.

It's set in a 1920s English village called Wall, on the other side of which is the parallel magical universe of Faerie . . . or, in Matthew Vaughn's high concept screen version, Stormhold . . . the gate to which is guarded by a tetchy old man with a stick who allows nobody pass through. An impetuous youth, Tristan Thorne (Charlie Cox), smooching by moonlight with the prettiest girl in the village (Sienna Miller), sees a meteorite flash across the sky and crash somewhere in Stormhold. He recklessly promises to retrieve it as a token of his love. Tricking his way to the other side of the wall, he soon meets up with the star's personification, a spirited young woman (Claire Danes) hunted for her magical powers not just by the putative heirs to the throne but by a trio of vicious witches led by Michelle Pfeiffer, who is bent on gouging out her heart and using it to achieve eternal youth and beauty.

Stardust tries to establish too much too quickly . . . you feel a bit like being stuck at a Harry Potter film without having read the book . . . but happily settles into a ribald and often riotous take on various romantic quest cliches.

Robert de Niro pops up as an outrageous cross-dressing pirate complete with a pink corset and killer heels whose skull-andcrossbones flying galleon roams the sky. Would-be king Rupert Everett ends up dead right at the start but hangs around as a ghost to comment on the action along with his brothers as they too come to grief one by one. As in Hairspray, Michelle Pfeiffer makes a delicious villain, showing no mercy to the young lovers (yes, the gallant Thorne has fallen in love with his damsel in distress, but still feels sworn to the stuck-up girl he sought to impress). David Kelly has a wonderful little running gag role as keeper of the gate which he delivers with his customary panache, complete with a great comic punch-line.