MirrorMask

What’s the Story?

Produced by the Jim Henson Company and penned by cult sci-fi writer Neil Gaiman, MirrorMask is 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." After her mother falls ill, Helena finds herself in a carnival-like dream-world, populated by masked people and other weird creatures. 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. The only hope of restoring this bizarre place to "normality" is the missing MirrorMask.

Is It Any Good?

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, whose works typically feature eccentric alternate worlds and mystic beings.

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.