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"So... how blasphemous was it?" That's not a question movie studios want on an exit poll for audiences coming out of a big weekend family fantasy movie that owes more to J.R.R. Tolkien and J.K. Rowling than it does to Christopher Hitchens and Aleister Crowley. Yet, because of a controversy stoked by religionists, atheists and editorial writers, the issue hovers over The Golden Compass like the witches that soar across the film's Arctic sky.

Director-screenwriter Chris Weitz's film version of the first book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy is meant to be a blockbuster for all major moviegoing demographics, from six to 16. Wreathed in lavish CGI effects, The Golden Compass traces the quest of the 12-year-old Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards) to find a missing friend and, eventually, to save her world. On the way to her destiny she's imprisoned by a glamorous vamp (Nicole Kidman), befriended by a talking polar bear (the talking is done by Ian McKellen) and accompanied by her own Jiminy Cricket — a cute, shape-shifting creature who speaks in the cheerfully urgent voice of Freddy Highmore (Charlie in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).

This creature and his fellows are the consciences, the very souls, of the humans they're attached to. Yet they're called "daemons"; and that's the first hint of Pullman's agenda. As the trilogy progresses the author reveals a battle between a dictatorial deity and the rebel angels determined to defeat Him. God is the villain of the piece, Satan the hero. And Lyra's on the side of the devils. As Pullman said to the Sydney Morning Post, "My books are about killing God."

The theological impudence of His Dark Materials didn't stop it from selling 15 million copies worldwide. In Britain the trilogy was a phenomenon, spawning a radio adaptation and a six-hour play at the National Theatre that sold out its run before it officially opened. The story's anti-theology had little to do with its success, or with impeding it. People of all ages love a ripping yarn, which this is; and The Lord of the Rings had established an appetite for multi-volume fantasy novels. (The trilogy's initial book, called Northern Lights in the U.K. and The Golden Compass in the U.S., was published two years before the first of the Harry Potter books came out.)

So New Line Cinema, flush from the surprise megahit status of the first Lord of the Rings film, bought the rights to the Pullman saga — and promptly started fretting about the God problem. Retain the books' central conflict, and stoke the wrath of America's Christian Right. Delete it, and risk alienating Pullman's fan base, which is not so large here as in Britain. (The books had already been slightly redacted in their U.S. editions, which cut passages about Lyra's budding sexuality.)

No one ever accused Hollywood of having guts. American movies have routinely made mock of priests and ministers, but in R-rated comedies and miniature indie dramas. Yet when the notion is raised of being faithful to a popular fantasy series that takes a caustic view of organized religion, the moguls become as cautious and pious as Republican presidential candidates.

In his Afterword to Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov wrote that one of the subjects taboo to American publishers was that of "the total atheist who lives a happy and useful life, and dies in his sleep at the age of 106." New Line, having invested something like $180 million in The Golden Compass, is similarly scared of its antireligious content. The company that boldly greenlighted Peter Jackson's $300 million Hobbit ambitions before a frame of the first movie was shot, and made billions from riding that risk, hasn't said yes to films two and three of the Pullman books — although the first movie ends with a chatty preview of the plot in the sequels, should they ever be made. For now, viewers will have to take that on faith.

As for the answer to that leading question about blasphemy in The Golden Compass, it would be a resounding "Huh?" If moviegoers are unaware of the Is-God-Bad? debate, they simply will not notice any theological elements, pro or con. That's how rigorously Weitz has secularized and sanitized the novel. Pullman's conception of the Magisterium, the ecclesiastical hierarchy that kidnaps and tortures children (it wants to separate kids from their "daemons," their very essences), is now an oppressive but vague dictatorship that is part Orwell's 1984, part Star Wars' Empire. Weitz also excised the last three chapters of the first book, where the Church's nefariousness is made explicit. Referring to the filmmakers, Pullman told the Atlantic Monthly, "They do know where to put the theology, and that's off the film."

Yet the movie still cued protests from the Catholic League, whose leader, the ever-belligerent William Donahue, said that even if the film isn't heretical, it will lead children to read the books, which are. Donahue might consider that Pullman is no more incensed by the misuse of religious authority than was the preacher for whom Christianity was named — the firebrand who tossed the money changers out of the temple, and condemned Pharisees for distorting God's word.

Someone just asked me if this was a movie review, and, if so, when will it begin? Right now. It's a decent, if familiar, fantasy with a glorious visual design: a lovely jumble of Victorian buildings, sleekly modern costumes and Jules Vernean spaceships. The film's climactic battle, between two imposing CGI ice bears, is a literal jaw-dropper. And its two lead performances made me hope there will be sequels — even if Weitz can't infuse this first episode with the animating spark of grand-scale moviemaking.

The all-not-quite-star cast includes a brief appearance by Daniel Craig as the powerful, mysterious Lord Asriel, Christopher Lee, who had parts in the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings movie series, drops by here to lend his imprimatur. Eva Green, the all-time seductive Eurobabe, is wasted in a Tinkerbell role. The film is primarily concerned with the edgy relationship of the heroine Lyra and her would-be ward Mrs. Coulter, played by Kidman as the apotheosis and parody of divine decadence. The Magisterium's own Mata Hari, Coulter takes on the challenge of deflecting Lyra's mission and stealing the child's most prized possession, a compass that can tell the truth and see the future.

Kidman-Coulter is all purring perfidy as she slinks through the mansion where Lyra is her guest and captive. The lady wears her gold or white ensembles so perfectly, you can almost hear the frocks whisper thank-you as they cling to her. But the bloodshot eyes are the giveaway to the character's venality. Her daemon is another: it's an ill-tempered monkey, with whom she has an abusive parent relationship. In one of the film's sharpest, most surprising scenes, Mrs. C. slaps it in anger, then promptly caresses and coos to it. Mummy hits you, Mummy loves you. Since that the daemon is an essential part of her personality, the flare-up gives hints of schizophrenia, amounts to self-abuse.

Kidman has played the bitch goddess before, though never with such silky pleasure in being malevolent. If there's a casting revelation, it's the lead actress, who was just 12 when she was chosen for Lyra, her first professional role. Dakota Blue Richards: it sounds like the name of a second-tier rock star's kid. But she's an actual English girl (with an American mother), and a knockout. Her look is both wary and sleepy, as if she'd just been poked awake from a bad dream. There's an intelligent insolence about Richards, suggesting a pre-teen Tilda Swinton. The girl has the burden of carrying the first half of the movie virtually alone, and does so effortlessly — as if she knows she was born to be appreciated in gigantic closeup — but unself-consciously, without the preening assertiveness of so many child actors. Thanks to Richards, Lyra is the complex character she should be: both earthy and magical.

Weitz's only previous solo directorial feature-film credit was the 2002 About a Boy, where he proved he was a confident shepherd of child actors. But he's not up to helming a superproduction like this. (At one point he dropped out of directing the film for that very reason.) Faithful to the novels' narrative if not their philosophy, his movie bustles through the plot twists and lightning characterizations as if it were its own Cliff Notes, rarely taking the time to acquaint the audience with Lyra's allies and enemies. Even a genre film has to relax; it's in the quieter moments that epic fantasies find their richness.

Watching this rough sketch of a better movie, I thought of an ideal director for The Golden Compass: Terry Gilliam, the wildly imaginative Monty Python alumnus who's equally at home in fractured fairy tales (Jabberwocky, The Brothers Grimm) and the voluptuous visualizing of otherworldly dictatorships (Brazil). But Gilliam is a handful for studio heads; he has a high ratio of aborted projects. To hire him would have taken balls on New Line's part, and quite possibly an financial death wish.

Say this for Weitz: he got the movie made, even in its current gelded form. But there's something missing, beyond the iconoclastic theology, in this perfectly OK, blandly underwhelming superproduction. The movie lacks an elevating passion, a cohesive vision, a soul. It's as if The Golden Compass has misplaced its artistic compass. Somebody stole its daemon.

Will the sequels get made, by Weitz or someone more gifted? Strictly on profit-and-loss terms, I'd guess no. The Golden Compass is unlikely to reach the LOTR stratosphere, and a company doesn't keep making money-draining pictures just to complete a trilogy. Remember, too, it's in the second and third books that Pullman revs up the blasphemy. Those film adaptations would have to be either offensive or unrecognizable.

Instead, get your own vision of the saga by reading the book. That's where fantasy comes alive, in the collaboration of the author and his audience of one. Often, the best movies play on the reader's own mindscreen.

• Richard Corliss