Pan's Labyrinth (C)

Summary: The critical response to this latest effort from fantasist Guillermo del Toro (Blade 2, Hellboy, The Devil's Backbone) has been nothing short of rapturous. I cannot fathom why.

Plot: Franco's Spain, 1944. Girl and her pregnant mother go to live with SOB Fascist soldier stepdad in countryside. Girl ventures into dreamworld now and then, mostly in the form of a "faun" who informs her that she is the lost princess of an underworld kingdom and that she must complete a series of dangerous tasks in order to prove she is really immortal (or something like that). In the meantime, back on planet Earth, a war rages on between rebels in the forest and the stepdad's army.

Analysis: Given the reviews and the auspicious trailer, I had high hopes. Unfortunately, while the film is reasonably well-photographed and well-acted, it is otherwise not very good.

First off, the real world plotline is incredibly uninteresting. Basically, there's some fighting. Various people die or are tortured. Some rebels kill some Fascists, some Fascists kill some rebels. That's it.

(Side note: There's a lot of gratuituous gore and violence in the movie. There is a gratuitous scene where a doctor who is helping out the rebels has to saw a guy's foot off. There's another one where Fascist stepdad bashes a guy's face in with a bottle. There's another where Fascist stepdad sews up his own lip in close-up. This has led many reviewers to get excited about the fact that "this movie is not for kids" as if that is a badge of honor. Frankly, I think this movie could have easily been PG-13 with no loss of artistic whatever. Not that I'm against movie violence, but it should serve some purpose, whereas here it seems designed only to make the audience go "eewww". None of the gory events have any effect on the plot or the character development.)

Second off, the fantasy world plotline is incredibly uninteresting. (spoilers) The faun tells the girl to complete three tasks. Why? To prove that she's immortal or something? OK, fine, let's say that is sufficient motivation. The first task is to go into a tree and feed rocks to a giant toad until it vomits out its entire stomach, which inexplicably contains a key. Does that sound disgusting? It is, and that's pretty much all it is. Second task is to go into a strange room where a truly frightening creature sits at a table full of appetizing food. Girl's supposed to recover a knife from a drawer in the wall using a key she obtained from the first task, but she must do all this without eating any of the food on the table. In fact, she completes the task just fine until she decides inexplicably to try eating some of the food on the table, despite repeated warnings not to. This then prompts the hideous creature to put his eyeballs into his palms and come chasing after her. What a surprise. OK, I have to confess: although this sequence makes no sense whatsoever, it was the one part of the movie that I found quite enjoyable, primarily due to the Boschian hideousness of the creature. I won't reveal the other tasks, except to say that there are basically no more creatures of interest, nor any interesting fantasy realms for the girl to explore. In the end, this girl's fantasy world simply consists of some hideous creatures with no discernible unifying mythology.

Finally, aside from being boring, it is unclear what the real and fantasy worlds have to do with each other. At certain points, they interact in the sense that the fantasy world offers some help to the girl in the real world. For example, at one point the faun tells her to put a mandrake root under her mother's bed (infused with milk and a few drops of blood), and after she does this, her mother starts to feel better. And when the root is removed by the stepdad, the mother is suddenly in terrible pain again. Good tip about the mandrake root, I'll have to test it out some time.