In 2005, comic book artist/illustrator/director Dave McKean (N[eon]) and regular collaborator Neil Gaiman (Babylon 5/TV Series) brought to the big screen the film, MirrorMask. With an estimated budget of $4,000,000.00, it seems the film may not have found a large audience at the theatres, but the people who have seen the film, be it at the theatre or through it's DVD release, have had positive comments on the film. Working with Jim Henson Productions, the film combines CGI, animation, special effects and live action, offering fans a bit of everything in the process.
Teenaged Helena (Stephanie Leonidas) is a juggler in a circus run by her mother (Gina McKee) and father (Rob Brydon). Like most teens, Helena dreams of escaping her family life and seeking the freedom she feels the outside world can offer. She and her mother argue one night and Helena tells her mother that 'She wishes she'd be the death of her'. Unfortunately, her mother falls seriously ill the following day and Helena has a definite case of the guilts for the argument and comment she made. Everything seems to be falling apart at the seams for Helena, the family circus is a mess and her father is acting rather strange and appears to be keeping the seriousness of her mother's illness from her. The night before her mother is to undergo surgery, Helena falls into a restless sleep and dreams of a fantasy land, overseen by two factions, one ruled by the White Queen and the other by the Black Queen and as you might expect, one represents good and the other, evil. This fantasy world is populated by strange creatures, the most bizarre are large, one-eyed spiders! Helena befriends, Valentine (Jason Barry) and through Valentine, Helena learns the White Queen has fallen ill. Helena learns that the only way to restore health to the White Queen is to find and return the fabled MirrorMask, which will magically restore health to the Queen. Helena soon realizes that not everything in the fantasy world is as it appears and begins to question if she's dreaming at all.
MirrorMask is offered in anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) and is a nice looking print. Grain will occasionally pop up, but nothing too severe or distracting and colors are solid and deep. Audio choices are a little offbeat, all Dolby Digital 5.1 with the languages offered being English, French, Portuguese and Thai! No problems with audio at all, everything comes through nicely with no audio drops having me scramble for the remote to pump up the volume. Subtitles offered for the disc include; English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Thai. On the commentary track, subtitles are offered in Spanish and Portuguese.
The MirrorMask disc offers a nice set of bonus features that include:
-Commentary Track with Director Dave McKean and Writer Neil Gaiman.
-Neil Talks-An interview with writer, Neil Gaiman.
-Dave Talks About Film-An interview with director Dave McKean.
-Beginnings-A short featurette that tells how the film came to be and how the crew was brought together for the film.
-Cast & Crew-Another short bit that has several cast members as well as crew members discussing their part in the film.
-Day 16-This was a really neat little addition, a time lapse look at a day in the making of the film! This bit is under 2 minutes in length.
-Flight of the Monkeybirds-A look at how some of the special effects were done for the film.
-Giants Development-A look at the design of the giants and how it was created.
-Questions & Answers-This is a Q&A session done at the San Diego Comic convention in 2004 in which fans ask several interesting questions of the writer and director.
-Poster & Still Gallery
-Theatrical Trailers- Labyrinth, Zathura, Stargate SG-1 and Jumangi
One note of advice, I saw that this film was supposed to have several bonus features, but when you choose the special features option, it looks rather limited, until you choose, The Making of MirrorMask, then the options are easily navigated.
I can vaguely recall seeing a trailer for this film on TV and paid little attention beyond that, so I really had no expectations going into this viewing, because I hadn't heard much about it. In the end, I found this to be an enjoyable effort, not a great film by any means, but certainly entertaining and with some excellent visuals. While watching the film, I thought it had an 'Alice In Wonderland' feel to it, those kind of visuals and story to it. Perhaps I'm in the minority in that feeling, but that's definitely one description I'd have for this film. The film bogs down a bit in the very beginning, but once the story begins in the fantasy land, I thought the film moved along, nicely. I thought the CGI effects looked quite good, not extremely obvious or distracting at all. My one complaint might be in the music used in the film, it needed to be a bit darker, in my opinion, but that would probably be a very minor complaint. I'd recommend this as a rental to fans of fantasy films and it might even warrant a purchase for some, my roommate went out and purchased the DVD after watching this with me!
Buy MirrorMask on DVD at Amazon.com
