Neil Gaiman’s Mirrormask
By stephanie - Monday, June 26th, 2006
I’m a fan of Neil Gaiman, and the Jim Henson Company is also on my “good” list for creating Farscape. When I recently found out that they had gotten together to create a fantasy movie, Mirrormask, I was somewhat excited.
Mirrormask has won tons of awards, and yet has languished in obscurity – so what gives? Now that I’ve seen the film, the answer is quite simple: The film itself is kind of boring.
We’ve seen this story in many guises before: A young girl is whisked away to a new and strange land where she goes upon a quest to find something…or is it herself? In Mirrormask, we meet Helena, a 15-year-old girl who works in her family circus and longs to run away to the “real world.”
Helena, strangely enough, looks like a very young Helena Bonham Carter, and I was somewhat distracted during the film, trying to figure out if they’d actually named her that on purpose. And that just goes to show you how completely unengaging the story itself is. I can’t explain what exactly is missing. It’s not that the archetypal “Alice in Wonderland” story itself is overdone, since anything can be made fresh with interesting characters and good dialogue. Mirrormask just somehow falls flat.
The visuals, on the other hand, are quite amazing. This has to be one of the strangest worlds ever displayed on film. It’s dark, it’s dreamy, it’s bizarre. Books become animals that fly back to the library if they believe you really dislike them. A cat lady’s home is filled with felines with eerie human-like faces, sitting in toilets.
With all of this imagination going on, it’s hard to identify exactly what makes the film so dull. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that, somehow, in spite of all the weirdness, there’s a lack of wonder here. In a magical world, the director needs to express that feeling of magic and wonder to the audience. This never happens.
This is all compounded by one of the worst, most annoying soundtracks ever, consisting of bad 1980s soft jazz, replete with a constant and irritating soprano saxophone solo.
What could be a great film, then, is simply kind of blah, and only interesting for some of the strange visuals. This is such a shame, considering that Gaiman is capable of much better.
July 16th, 2006 at 2:02 pm
See, I loved the soundtrack and the visuals. I found the real world part highly dull, and I found the latter part of the film quite dull. The first part in the alternate world was interesting. Bit of a puzzle. Cool surrealistic, artsy stuff. But the main character, ultimately didn’t win me over. I didn’t much care if she got back or not.
But the film pleased my eyes and ears. It, sadly, didn’t do much for my heart or mind.
Mirtika
asst editor at Dragons, Knights & Angels
http://mirathon.blogspot.com
http://www.mirfiction.com
http://specfaith.ritersbloc.com/