User reviews

David McKean takes us on a roller-coaster journey of dreams and fantasies with a touch of child-like innocence. Mirrormask is a story about a strained mother-daughter relationship that takes a turn for the worse when the mother (Gina McKee) falls ill. Helena, played by Stephanie Leonidas has to find the Mirrormask to save her.

This film lends itself to the standard coming of age tale, where a child is trapped in a fantasy land of in a dream-state seeking a key to unlock her maturity. And so it is in Mirrormask. We meet the family, including Rob Brydon of BBC comic fame, working at their family business, the circus which acts as an ideal presetting to the fantasy that ensues.

Jim Henson's production workshop lent a hand to the film contributing its knowledge and wisdom to the scary and beautiful creatures strewn within this fantasy. As Helena dreams, she takes on a world where she has all the answers but does not realise it yet. Jason Barry plays her side-kick, Valentine as the pair encounter all sorts of creatures and solve riddles to find the Mirrormask.

So here it is, we have seen Jim Henson's maverick creations in Labyrinth and David McKean's animation abilities (including being a conceptual artist on the first Harry Potter movie) but the eye candy is all we get- great for kids but parents accompanying their ankle-biters may be left a little wanting. The film is undoubtedly beautiful and a fantasy unlike any you've seen before but that seems to be it. The plot is simple and relinquishes depth for image and creative design. A powerful family drama could have been the driving force for this animated fantasy but it seems that this is overlooked in return for beautiful creatures and constant exploration of different worlds.

All performances are good. Leonidas having to act the majority of the film in front of a blue screen and Jason Barry lending some great comedy but that all lies too thin on a film that essentially has no story. Nevertheless the children in the audience will not mind as there is enough to keep their eyeballs twitching with intrigue as we see talking cats, a funny librarian (voiced by Stephen Fry) and some of the most bizarre creations since Jim Henson last got involved in a project.

What amazing prospects for a fantasy film, to have two prolific artists; Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman combining their talents to create a work (in Gaiman's words) "sort of in the same style as Labyrinth." In fact, Jim Henson's Workshop did a lot of the visual effects for the film. The concept makes you want to drool with anticipation.

The direction was superb, the art was scintillating, and the dialogue was engaging. However, Mirrormask never really seemed to come together as a fantasy film in the way that Labyrinth or The Dark Crystal did. The story (though Gaiman has been and remains my favorite author of all time) seemed a bit contrived. That "through the looking-glass" trope has really been done almost to death since Lewis Carroll made it a literary fantasy staple. And Mirrormask, sadly, adds little to it. The film made me recall a lesser film, The Pagemaster, a fantasy footnote in the annals of film-making. The big lessons in Pagemaster were that reading is good, and you can do anything you can imagine; asinine little glossy aphorisms that attempt to convey meaning without doing the legwork. Unlike Labyrinth, where nothing could be taken for granted, Mirrormask asks the viewer to take almost everything for granted, including the fact that nearly every scene is green-screened to death. Again, I am reminded of a lesser movie, Skycaptain and the World of Tomorrow, which sacrificed substance for flashy (and fake-looking) CGI manipulation. Like the latter film, Mirrormask purports to show the viewer a fantastic reality by overusing a method we KNOW to be fake. The interaction between the characters and the fantastic environment, rather than bridging the gap between reality and fantasy, widened the rift by underscoring the "cleverness" of CGI technology.

All criticism aside, it really is a competent fantasy flick. The characters are multidimensional even if their surroundings are not. The dialogue is very well done, and the conceptual art is awesome. It's not the best fantasy film ever made, but I would watch it again.

Visually I thought Mirrormask was of excellent quality, with weird characters and strange buildings, it could have come right out of Salvador Dalis mind. This futuristic and surrealistic look is what makes it worth a watch. But storywise it wasn't that interesting, borderline boring in my opinion. The acting wasn't bad, just nothing breathtaking. I just wonder what drugs the writers Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean took, it looks like good stuff. If you like weird movies this one might be for you.

Dunno, the underlying plot here sort of felt closer to an afterschool special, than the spawning of a new myth. Long ago, I was loosely following "Sandman" the comic by Neil Gaiman and that seemed to be have more revelatory moments in the odd month's book than this film.

That being said, this film has some terribly clever moments but too many plain terrible ones. I think the young actress, Stephanie Leonidas, was overmatched here, or maybe lost in the CGI fog. At times her expression just didn't seem to match the goings-on on screen. Perhaps she wore the requisite bad haircut as a sign of a troubled but talented teen better than any of the other auditions?

Or maybe she looked enough like a young Helena Bonham-Carter?

As for that CGI, they did try to do quite a bit, but often things looked so smudgy, at least on my small screen with DVD. And then those high-up shots, well that's classic bad CGI, little ants squirming around.

I suspect though as Dave McKean and his team work more and more together, things will sharpen up. His drawings were some of the best bits, and I mean just the drawings, not necessarily the drawings animated to life. And I think they'll do a consistently better job on sound next time around too; again a few flashes of brilliance (Mom's fainting and the music there) but other rough spots.

And I won't say much about the light jazz/new age/reject for a Cirque du Soleil soundtrack. Yikes...really bad, not to mention a hideous Carpenter's remake for Helena's black makeover.

As for the humor, I've got to disagree with an earlier reviewer saying this had laugh-out-loud moments. Unless something along the line of

"Rocks and logs may bite like dogs but words will never harm me." busts your gut, I think you have to settle for a handful of smirks in this one. Seriously, check out the IDMB quotes on this

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0366780/quotes

Wow, I'm ending up being more disparaging than I had intended, this at least is a film (if not a story) that's quite unique in its presentation, so I want to encourage them to make more. It might be that I'm just too old to identify with adolescent angst learning to grow up. At the same time, my twin four-year olds were too young to get into this...despite my cheerleading efforts to get them to dig the style if not the story.

Speaking of young uns, even they know that Luke was Darth Vader's son by now, so the whole separation of good and evil borders on passe. Please leave such drastic demarcations to misguided geo-politicians, and in our art let's strive for something more intertwined.

Ultimately I'd say save this maybe for a rainy day, unless you are a die-hard Gaiman fan (i.e. you *loved* "Good Omens") or are a supporter of Dave McKean (then watch the film with your finger on the pause button and stop to enjoy certain frames).

5/10

Sprawling fantasy films are now the domain of the big boys, and this is a reason why. The setup in MirrorMask, a girl trapped in a circus and wanting to break away from both her parents and childhood, is a rich pool to draw from. But the linear plot line, the clumsy Britishness and the chronic lack of pacing make this an arid uninvolved film.

The graphic style is well rendered but fails utterly to incorporate the actors. Compared to Spirited Away or even Wallace and Grommit, one has to question the technique involved. There is no point looking to Dark Crystal or Time Bandits for inspiration - when big budget films like the Matrix have a much stronger mesh of material and effects. I liked Time Bandits, but check the date it was made. Any 5 minutes of Lord of the Rings make this look foolish. Better direction could come from Amelie - which used carefully crafted interlocking parts to weave a spell over the audience. Sometimes I felt I was watching an updated Bagpuss.

The parts filmed in real life allow us to enjoy the good cast, and sharp locations in Brighton. But the fantasy elements remind me of a cheap gift shop - good for buying presents for 20 minutes but totally unexciting.

So close.....perhaps to a US audience the scuzzy surroundings of Brighton and the down at heel circus would seem exotic. For Brits they were all too familiar and gave a depressing start, not helped by Dora Bryan (DORA BRYAN????)in a cameo as the grandmother.... Once the "dream sequence" had got moving and the fantastic creatures began to appear it picked up pace and got me involved but the "Henson" touch of Dark Crystal and Labrynth was missing. The leading lady was excellent, others have noted her resemblance to a young Helena Bonham Carter and I'm sure we will see more of her. Rob Brydon is an excellent comedy writer and script doctor but he seemed ill at ease with the part of the ne'er do well, circus owning father and the part was under-written.

Chop the first ten minutes and it might score higher.

Here's the thing: I prefer my surrealism to fall out of a book. I'd argue that my brain finds more imagery floating out of Hesse or Barth sentences than it ever will with the extended Cirque du Soleil video-clips in this film. OK, I'm being harsh. The fantasy sequences are stunning, beautifully rendered, exquisite. In spite of the soundtrack. BUT...you know, nothing looks different on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th....(repeat)...viewings. The floating giants still float exactly the same. C'mon...try the book thing if you want imagery, let your mind go. Every viewing guaranteed to be different. I promise. So then.....what's the point here, exactly? It started off with a really nice premise: an intelligent looking girl, teenage angst, a sick mother, a circus..whoa! great ingredients!...then it was taken over by aforementioned interminable surrealist sequence. Rework suggestion: 1) Pull out the middle bit - all 90% of it. Speed it up about 100 times. Sell it to Sony-BMG as a video-clip for their next big thing. 2) Get a real storyteller. I'd love to know what happened to that charismatic girl and her family. My 5/10 = 10/10 for visuals, 0/10 for everything else.