Mirrormask film review

certificate_PG

MIRRORMASK

Neil Gaiman is a hugely successful British writer best know for his graphic novel Sandman, produced in collaboration with illustrator Dave McKean. They have now produced their first feature film, a surreal odyssey about a young girl who enters a parallel universe. With the legendary Jim Henson company on board to lend a hand with puppetry and animatronics, they have created a bizarre and sumptuous film, which bears the hallmarks of a cult in the making.

Mirrormask is the story of Helena, a fifteen-year-old girl who lives in a circus community in Brighton, owned and managed by her parents. Helena dreams (neatly) of running away from the circus and joining real life, but her plans are thwarted when the circus is threatened with closure and her mother is rushed to hospital for an emergency operation.

Despite these setbacks Helena still sets off but instead of going to the arcade on Brighton Pier ends up in an alternative reality known as the Dark Lands. Inhabited by strange, mark-wearing creatures, and governed by unusual laws, the Dark Lands is principally split into an area of light and one of dark, and Helena must travel from one to another in order to find the much coveted Mirrormask. With help and hindrances arriving in equal measure, it's no easy task.

Gaiman and McKean's story follows a classically simple arc: the quest to find a long-lost treasure. It's the depiction of the world that this occurs in that is their film's highlight. It's a unique, spooky landscape populated by all sorts of increasingly bizarre characters. Director McKean rejected the idea of working with a traditional animation house and instead recruited the best graduates from Bournemouth University's film department, and together they have created a spectacular universe. The sheer number of original ideas and brilliantly rendered characters include flying books, roving eyes and boxes that turn into live bands and back again. It's like a Miyazaki animation brought to life.

Helena Stephanie Leonidas is a promising young lead who ably shoulders the responsibility of the film and is given grownup assistance by Gina McKee and Rob Brydon. It may not be everyone's cup of tea: some may find it a little slow, too pretentious or simply too baffling, but on the other hand some non-fantasy fans may well find themselves drawn into a genre they had previously ignored, brought alive here in a hugely imaginative manner.

Paul Hurley