MirrorMask: Critic Reviews

Has something to astonish everyone.

If MirrorMask is a marvel of visual ingenuity, its monochromatic panoramas are too busy and flat to yield an illusion of depth or to convey a feeling of characters moving in space.

So single-minded in its reach for fantasy, it becomes the genre's evil opposite: banality.

Aggressive visual invention is rarely its own reward, and this movie does nothing to better the odds.

The film galumphs along in static panels, prioritizing flash over thought, hyperextending a story that would barely sustain a children's picture book.

Like many dreams, you won't remember it when you wake up.

Each scene is a masterwork of composition and execution.

The movie is a triumph of visual invention, but it gets mired in its artistry and finally becomes just a whole lot of great stuff to look at while the plot puts the heroine through a few basic moves over and over again.

For all its flying cats with rainbow wings and navigational library books, MirrorMask barely has a story, its talent and vision focused entirely on its singular dreamworld facade.

Too long, and too rich, for its own good, but clearly Gaiman and McKean were bursting with ideas. Those ideas fly all over the place, sometimes landing with a thunk, but more often taking the breath away.

It's a near-flawless marriage of content and form, a movie that kids, adults and graduate students of computer imagery will all have their own reasons to love.

McKean's inexperience as a director trips the film. There is so much going on that the viewer can't take in all the imagery, and McKean's devotion to his skewed vision slows the story to a crawl.

An overproduced novelty picthat looks and feels more like a company promo reel than an engaging piece of storytelling.

Too strange and disjointed to attract much of an audience, but its astonishing visuals showcase a major new talent: first-time feature director and book illustrator Dave McKean.

A 30-minute idea wrapped in a 100-minute movie. It's a jewel box filled with cubic zirconia.

Could be Exhibit A for anyone arguing the case that modern filmmaking lacks a strong sense of story.

Leonidas walks this tightrope quite engagingly, showing us a girl on the cusp of womanhood, torn between two competing needs -- to become an adult, to remain a child, to vilify, to revere.

The narrative is simplistic and lacking in energy, and the characters are sketched instead of fully formed.

If The Wizard of Oz were reborn in the 21st century, it might look a lot like MirrorMask.

There is something oddly intoxicating about Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman's coming-of-age fantasy.

Dense, dreamlike fantasy isn't for every kid.

The story is interesting, in a twisted fairytale sort of way, but the novelty of this dream world does eventually wear off, and we're left checking our watches.

MirrorMask proves that a movie can be brilliant and awful at the same time.