How to Make the Brother's Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson,
Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso Happy...
all at the Same Time
(as well as this guy writing the movie review)

by Christian De Matteo

Super

I have been hyped up about MirrorMask since I first got wind that the great Neil Gaiman and the bizarre and wonderful Dave McKean were teaming up to make it.  In the tradition of Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal, was what I kept hearing.

Well, tonight after stalking out my Blockbuster, I attained a copy and am pleased to report that this is indeed a movie worthy of such company.

A true fairytale in its illustration, execution and creepiness, MirrorMask does what few modern day movies have the courage to do when telling a story to children:  Scare them a little.  But isn't that the point?  Aren't fairytales our way of introducing children to the good, the bad, and the unsavory of the world, the harsh realities they might encounter, will encounter, and to teach them the moral base and foundation they will need to survive?  Yes, but now we're too afraid to make them need therapy.  My contention is that a child who is lured into an old van with candy and molested, raped, murdered or all of the above will need more help than any child who has trouble at night sleeping because of a story that taught them what to really do if that old pervert shows up.

With this point of view, Gaiman and McKean tell a fairytale not aimed at little kids who might be on Lester the Molester's immediate radar, but rather at budding teenagers, particularly girls finding it hard to cope with the transition from Mommy and Daddy's little girl to that strange middle ground between that and adult counterpart.  Helena (played wonderfully Stephanie Leonidas) has snapped at her mother before she was supposed to go on for her part in the family's circus, and inadvertently seems to have wished death upon her.  Mom inevitably falls deathly in and poor Helena believes it's her fault.

And in her dream, the subject of the remainder of the film, it is.

The beautiful thing is that though trumpeting the wonders of the fairytale world and all the stand-bys of the genre, the celebration never falls into cliché.  Helena knows almost instinctively that she is a dream and enters the world of Jungian superpower by realizing her ability to control it.  Here Gaiman (the scribe behind the Sandman series of graphic tales) and McKean truly show their expertise in handling traditional fare in an innovative work.

By drafting the blueprint of the fairytale with the pen of Andre Breton, the brushes of Pablo Picasso and Rene Magritte, and the pens of Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud and Joseph Campbell, Gaiman and McKean create an entirely new world we are entirely comfortable in... except when we are meant not to be.

But that's kind of homey too, in a scary, remember being a kid and hiding under the bed, kind of way.

Almost every review I've seen by major film critics of MirrorMask has praised the film's visual ingenuity and trashed the film's lacking creativity.  Rubbish, hogwash, and crap I say.  The film a perfect modern fable, combining cell phones and modern-psuedo-teen-punk fashion with all the trappings of Hansel and Gretel and The Little Mermaid. 

MirrorMask is a triumph, a marvel and a film to be seen by everyone.  It's fun, it's funny, it's scary and it's stunning.

Well done, Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean.  Now everyone should run out and by Coraline and American Gods.