I was trawling round entertainment.ie the other day and noticed that Mirrormask is playing at Virgin \ UGC \ Cineworld \ whatever it’s calling itself this week cinema. 
However I think this is the last week it’s showing as it is on limited release, so with that in mind I got in touch with my Movie Buddy and we headed along to the show last night. After standing in the sweet shop queue for what seemed like ages while Clueless Joe Jackson dithered and blithered behind the counter trying to put a hotdog together we eventually got to our seats. I have to ask what is it about that place? The popcorn is already bagged up for customers and the drink machines are self serve so the only thing staff have to do is punch in one large popcorn and one coke to the till and yet they still make a haymes of it. This was not helped by the girl ahead of us who dumped her entire freshly purchased box of popcorn all over the counter. Upstairs in the cinema my movie buddy was thrilled as we were in theatre 16 which was one he hadn’t been in before. Inside it looked exactly like er, theatre 15.
Hmmm, now before I go on there is an issue with the Movie Buddy. After my last review of ‘Hidden’ I received a whiny email from him asking why he didn’t get a ‘cool’ name in my blog. He mentioned the Barfly and the Gurrier and the Gin Lady in passing, to which my response was that the Barfly just is and the Gurrier and the Gin Lady named themselves and if he’d ever met them he’d know I’m damned if I’m gonna cross them on that score. As for the ‘coolness’ factor well… I leave that to you to decide gentle reader. So given the fact that I’m being forced into choosing a new name for him and with the knowledge that ‘General Zod’ has already been taken by another friend my movie buddy shall henceforth be known as ‘Priscilla’. For which reason I shall explain in a later entry.
Meanwhile back in theatre 16…
Priscilla and I settled into our seats and about 3 minutes into the opening credits he had to hold me back as a crowd of wittering italian \ russian \ spanish \ {enter country name} here studenty types sat down two seats away and proceeded to CONVERSE LOUDLY for the first 10 minutes or so of the movie. (I really need to get myself a handbag sized flamethrower.)
Eventually they shut up and settled down, but not before I’d given myself an embolism with the rage. Not enough of an embolism that I can’t provide you with a review this morning thankfully. The plot itself is your basic ‘questing tale’ and borrows heavily from the likes of the Wizard of Oz, Labyrinth, The Never Ending Story and others. Girl (child) is whisked to another place and spends the duration trying to get back home, overcoming obstacles and saving people and kingdoms along the way.
But this is a delightful visual chocolate box of a film. McKean’s artwork is stunning and there are nods to previous Gaiman \ McKean collaborations within the film. (Keep an eye out for the ‘Wolves in the Walls’ Pig Puppet in a cameo as Helena’s piggybank, and the Mouse Circus from Coraline has a short role in the White Queen’s palace.)
Casting for the main roles is spot on. Helena is portrayed by the (surprisingly older than she looks) Stephanie Leonidas with the same sharp wit and intelligence first seen in Jennifer Connolly’s ‘Sarah’ twenty years ago. (Jesus, checking IMDB and it really is twenty years since David Bowie pranced around in THOSE trousers with THAT hair!)
Valentine (played by Jason Barry, Wa-hey Up the Dubs!) has an annoyingly familiar voice, again IMDB tells me nothing, apparently he was in ‘Titanic’ but I’ve banished that movie from my memory, so that’s no help. His role is the most transparent and you can see the steps his character is going to make before he does, although to be fair they gave the Irishman the best lines.
Rob Brydon’s turn as Helena’s father is well-played and is a nice change from his painfully pathetic alter-ego Keith Barrett. Gina McKee is beautiful as Helena’s mother \ The White Queen and terrifyingly vicious as the Black Queen. (Much use of black contact lenses here.) But it is in the scenes between Brydon (as both Father and Prime Minister) and Leonidas where we see a gentle father-daughter relationship that is highlighted in a particularly touching scene on a dingy Brighton rooftop. The night of McKee’s surgery is when the film changes from live action to the twisted papery mirrormask world and it is here that the true scope of Dave McKean’s talent and vision is apparent.
The creatures are weird and unusual, Hensonesque but touched by Dave McKean’s pen these are more than Jareth’s goblin horde, or Dark Crystals’ gelfings. This is a world where books have feelings, massive giants bob weightlessly like helium balloons, (gas giants geddit?) sphinxes no bigger than housecats devour entire libraries and a Really Useful Book lives up to its name.
Not that the movie doesn’t have problems. I wasn’t crazy about the nu-jazz \ deranged circus soundtrack and at times Gaiman’s script batters you over the head with the metaphors, which is unusual and I can only ascribe to the fact that he was writing Anansi Boys at the same time and didn’t have enough time to iron out the clunkier allegories and finish the final draft of his novel. But it’s not all bad, there is still that twinkle of wit we’ve come to expect and the characters aren’t typical fairy tale goodie two shoes. They know the definition of irony and aren’t above a little cynicism even in a universe as surreal as the mirrorworld.
This isn’t going to be to everyone’s taste, a number of people walked out of the cinema last night, something I’ve never understood. Did they not read the reviews and blurbs before buying a ticket? For me, it was a visual delight, Priscilla wasn’t so enamoured and thought the plot took far too much from Labyrinth, but this will, in my opinion be one of those rare movies, like Labyrinth or The Princess Bride that lasts.
I think I’ve said it before, but it’s always worth saying again.
Thing about this stuff is you don’t notice just how bloody ORANGE it is when it’s in the bottle. That can’t be good. My guts must be glowing.
