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ARTICLE
DVD Review: MirrorMask
by R.J. Carter Published: January 29, 2006
Rating: Country: USA Release Date: February 14, 2006 Distributor: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Director: · Dave McKean Cast: · Stephanie Leonidas · Jason Berry · Rob Brydon · Gina McKee Related Sites: ·IMDb: MirrorMask
Grade: A+
Take four uncommonly good actors, toss them into a world of line drawings, saturate them with the spirits of Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, and wrap the whole project up in a dream quest of adventurous proportions, and you'll almost but not quite have something entirely unlike "MirrorMask". In fact, it would barely scratch the surface of this amazing gem of a film. This collaborative brainchild of award winning fantasists Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean -- backed by the Jim Henson Company -- is a non-stop visual carnival of delights that begs rewatching almost immediately after the credits have finished rolling.
Many children go through a period where they want to run away and go join the circus. Helena (Stephanie Leonidas) wants just the opposite: she wants to run away from her parents' circus and join the real world. After yet another row with her mother (Gina McKee) in which Helena verbally wishes her dead, Helena is suddenly burdened with immense guilt when her mother collapses, is rushed to the hospital, and diagnosed with cancer.
One night shortly after, Helena goes to sleep in her room -- a room plastered floor to ceiling with Helena's artwork -- and awakens to find herself in a Dali-esque world of impossibly surreal creatures, ruled by a new definition of the word 'logic'. Here, she is mistaken for a missing princess and taken to a palace, where the Prime Minister (Rob Brydon -- who also plays Helena's father) is interviewing candidates who all believe they possess the charm to awaken the sleeping Queen of Light. The Queen had fallen into a deep sleep shortly after meeting up with the now-missing princess.
To save the Queen -- and, subsequently, the remainder of this world out of balance -- Helena must find the missing charm: the MirrorMask. But the princess has used the mask to escape her mother, the Queen of Shadows, ending up in Helena's world where, through windows, Helena can see her doing all sorts of terrible, awful things: smoking, snogging with boys, fighting with her father -- and ripping down the drawings that actually comprise the world she is now in. If Helena doesn't find the mask in time, there may soon no longer be a world to find it in!
Helena explains her quest to the monkeybirds.
Ably assisted by the roguish Valentine (Jason Berry, "Titanic"), Helena's quest takes her from one unbelievable scenario to another as she encounters floating giants, monkeybirds named Bob (and one named Malcolm), and the Queen of Shadows herself who is more than happy to keep Helena in exchange for her errant child.
Each actor -- and I'm not discounting the voice actors -- contributes uniquely to this film, but this is all Leonidas's show. When one considers how much she's physically working with a blue screen acting to nobody, you really get an appreciation for the range of her talent. The same can be said for Jason Berry, who does much of the same while encumbered with a face mask.
If you're already one of the legions of the Cult of Gaiman and McKean, you probably already have a standing order for this DVD. If you do (or even if you don't) you'll be delighted (or maybe not) to know that there are a number of special features included on this disc. For one, there is an optional commentary track wherein Gaiman and McKean provide copious insight to the world of "MirrorMask" (or at least to the world of making a movie.) There are featurettes of Neil talking about books he has done with Dave (Violent Cases, Signal to Noise, and Mr. Punch), and Dave talking about his short films "The Week Before" and "Neon" and the influence the horror films of the silent movie era had on his artwork. A handful of behind-the-scenes featurettes are to be had, as well as a longish question and answer session about the project recorded at the 2005 Comicon in San Diego.
Previews on this disc include "Labyrinth", "Zathura", "Jumanji Deluxe Edition", "Stargate SG-I Seasons 1-7" and "Stargate Atlantis Season 1". The audio can be set to English, French, Portuguese or Thai, with subtitles in English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Thai. The subtitles also offer something nice I've not seen before on a DVD, that being that the commentary track -- if activated -- is also subtitled in Spanish and Portuguese.
MirrorMask Disc Guide
Main Feature (With optional commentary by McKean and Gaiman
"The Making of MirrorMask"
