Nicole Kidman fans can sleep easy. After a series of arthouse flops, she is back on magnificent form as Mrs Coulter in the new £90million movie version of Northern Lights, the opening episode of Philip Pullman's fantasy series, His Dark Materials.

Dressed in vampish outfits, she hisses and caresses her way across the screen. We haven't seen such a complex portrait of cartoon evil since Cruella de Vil.

Excitement was palpable at the premiere of the Golden Compass at the Odeon Leicester Square. After all it has become headline news. The Catholic League insists it's anti-Christian and has urged parents to ban their children from seeing it. The National Secular Society has condemned the decision to remove anti-religious references.

But is it any good? Definitively, yes. A beautifully made, spectacularly designed family movie, it dares to ask serious questions about good and evil, free will and adolescent sexuality. Granted many of these topics will float over the heads of its younger audience - but there's a spoonful of medicine mixed in with the sugar.

The first book sees Lyra travel from Oxford to the icy wastelands of the North, as she attempts to rescue her kidnapped friend and fight the Magisterium, which condones the surgical removal of children's souls. There are genuinely scary moments including a vicious battle between armoured bears and a chilling scene where scientists try to cut away Lyra's daemon (reminiscent of Nazi eugenics).

How does it compare with His Dark Materials, the six-hour marathon staged by the National Theatre? Well, we miss some of the subversive storytelling - and no film can match the intimacy of live performance.

But the film looks fabulous: all art deco interiors and hi-tech gadgets. Instead of using live puppets to create Pullman's talking daemons ( a metaphor for sexuality which only "fixes" when we reach puberty), director-Chris Weitz relies on CGI wizardry. Bond fans will relish seeing Daniel Craig as the bearded Lord Asriel, although his role won't develop until the next two parts.

But it's 13-yearold British actress Dakota Blue Richards who is the major find. The antithesis of a Hollywood wonderbrat, she brings gravity, and a rare, grubbyelbowed stubbornness, to the role.