Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that although there's some potentially scary creature imagery in this fantastical plunge into a post-modern Wonderland, it's more weird and playfully grotesque than ugly or horrific. A menacing queen who sprouts black tentacles (through her mouth at one point) is the worst of it. Some young viewers may just be more confused about the otherworldly events and warped logic than scared or otherwise upset.
Families can talk about the movie's messages about growing up and acceptance. Do kids "get" those themes when they watch? How is the "anti-Helena" different from the real Helena? Parents, the film is full of literary and mythological allusions (like the Riddle of the Sphinx) -- see how many your kids can identify. Being familiar with that type of subtext may also help them appreciate the complex paradoxes and dense oddities in the somewhat similar Lewis Carroll stories Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Charles Cassady, Jr.
Every so often the Jim Henson Company partners up with some outside talent to produce a non-traditional "Muppet" movie. These ventures are usually creature-heavy fantasies that swap Kermit and Fozzie for high imagination, cool designs, memorable visuals ... and mixed reception by the public.
MIRRORMASK mixes avant-garde, computer graphic "puppets" with the writing skills of Neil Gaiman, a literary cult hero to fans both young and old for novels and comics -- like Stardust and Sandman -- that feature eccentric alternate worlds and mystic beings. (How strange is a typical Gaiman story? Imagine that you, reading this right now, are really a freaky fiction, dreamt up by some weird creature in a twisted, magical alternate reality.)
In MirrorMask, his stylistic tendencies yield a sometimes-bewildering takeoff on Alice in Wonderland, with a saucier heroine. Helena (Stephanie Leonidas), a teen juggler in her parents' small circus, tires of the big top and angrily wishes she had a "real life" (aren't kids always wishing they could run away and join the circus?). After her mother falls ill, Helena finds herself in some sort of jagged, carnival-like dream-world, populated by people who wear masks for faces and other weird creatures (like a squad of police-things on stiff, stilt-like legs that forms a cage around her). Basically, she's been pulled into a parallel dimension, linked to ours through her own surreal sketches.
In this other world, the balance between light and darkness has been disrupted by a missing princess -- for whom Helena is mistaken. The Queen of Light is in a coma, and the Queen of Darkness is destroying everything with her wrath (both are played by Gina McKee, who also plays Helena's mother). The only hope of restoring this bizarre place to "normality" is the missing MirrorMask.
And that, basically, is the film. Viewers will be forgiven if they're a bit baffled about the whys and hows of the story -- they can get a bit lost amid the dialogue, which brims with curious allusions to both classic mythology and newfangled Gaiman-esque fantasy stuff, puns and metaphors sprung to life. You have to be pretty quick on the uptake to figure out what the "future fruit" is, among other things. For parents and children who love fantasy and have both patience and a sense of adventure, it's fun to explore this fractured fairyland. But when the dark queen declares "Enough of this nonsense!," less-invested viewers might be inclined to agree.
If your kids do enjoy the film, try some of the other kid-friendly "experimental" Henson movies -- like The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth (which also features a teen heroine). Or check out Monty Python alum Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentA brief scene of the heroine's alter ego cuddling with a boy (the heroine strongly disapproves). |
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ViolenceA few times a creeping darkness turns humans (or humanlike creatures) into statue-like figures who can shatter. But all of the scariness/creepiness is based in fantasy and isn't "real" by a long shot. |
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Social BehaviorCharacters are rarely entirely good or evil (not even the tentacled Queen of Darkness), which is a refreshing change from the one-sided morality in a lot of movies -- but a little odd when the heroine is betrayed by a character she thought was her friend, only to have him come crawling back a few scenes later. The heroine is a strong female lead who ultimately makes the right, responsible choices, though there's tacit approval of her being a graffiti artist. |
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Commercialism |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoNothing overt, though the movie does have an overall "trippy," Alice-in-Wonderland-like ambience, and a key clue is the phrase "get higher" (wink wink, nudge nudge). |
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