The feature film directorial debut of comic book artist and illustrator Dave McKean was written by regular collaborator Neil Gaiman. The two are best known for their work on DC/Vertigo's popular adult fantasy comic book, The Sandman and had been working together on and off for well over a decade by the time this film was made. In collaboration with Jim Henson Productions, they've managed to do an interesting job of bringing their unique blend of the fantastic to life on the big screen through a combination of CGI, special effects, animation and live action performances – in short, the film is very much a mixed media affair, much like most of McKean's still artwork is.

MirrorMask follows the exploits of a teenage girl named Helena (Stephanie Leonidas) whose mother, Joanne (Gina McKee) and father (Rob Brydon) run a circus where she performs as a juggler. One night, tired of her life and craving the freedom that the outside world has to offer, she tells her mother that she 'wishes she'd be the death of her' after they have an argument. Of course, the next day her mother gets quite sick and is hospitalized, and Helena feels responsible for it all.

With the fate of the circus falling into disarray and her father behaving rather strangely and hiding from her the truth about her mother's illness, Helena is under a fair bit of stress. The night before her mother is to have some pretty serious surgery performed on her, she falls asleep and dreams of fantasyland overseen by two factions, lead by the White Queen and the Black Queen, each representing good and evil. This world is populated by strange, unearthly creatures like large one eyed spiders and strange sphinx like creatures who destroy books for fun but soon Helena finds an ally or two (primarily a harlequin named Valentine played by Jason Barry) and eventually learns that the White Queen has fallen ill.

Through some basic detective work, Helena finds out that the only way that she can save the White Queen from dying is to find and return to her the fabled Mirror Mask, which will be able to magically restore her to her former healthy self. Soon, however, Helena learns that not everything in this world is at it first seems and that she might not actually be dreaming at all as real life and fantasy soon intertwine with rather unusual results.

Part coming of age story (in a sense, Helena does get her wish to leave the circus, even if it's not in the way she probably imagined it would happen), part Alice In Wonderland spin off (there are some uncanny similarities), MirrorMask is an interesting and not unsuccessful experiment. Though it takes a while to get moving, once Helena moves into the fantasy world the visuals are non-stop cool and incredibly creative. The integration of CGI, special effects and live action performers works really well in this film, which to the effects team's credit is very hard to pull off, and the amount of imagination and sheer weirdness that went into making this movie does pay off in terms of how it looks and how it feels. This is, in short, one of McKean's illustrations come to life in the most literal and visually perfect sense.

The storyline presents some interesting comparisons to the viewer by presenting the coldness of the real world against the sometimes warm but always exciting fantasy land that Helena finds herself in. By presenting duality to the personalities of Helena and some of the other 'real world' characters from her every day life in the world of the MirrorMask the script seems to be commenting on the way that people can evolve and have different sides to them given different circumstances which gives us some interesting food for thought as the story plays out. Helena is a likeable enough central character, she's cute but she's believable and she's smart but not all knowing – her personality and character traits are one of the few qualities that grounds anything in the film to reality and Stephanie Leonidas does do a pretty decent job performing much of the film on a soundstage and acting opposite many completely animated characters.

That being said, MirrorMask is not without its flaws. First and foremost is the score, which sounds almost like free jazz and which doesn't fit the moody atmosphere and fairly dark story very well at all. Maybe they were trying to make for some sort of contrast with the music but instead of turning out as an interesting experiment it is actually quite grading. Some of the supporting characters are a little too silly for their own good as well. Granted, a lot of the story takes place in and around a circus so there's bound to be some oddball characters there but do we really need a mute clown named Pingo running around in that obnoxious manner that clowns who take themselves so seriously always seem to have? Rather than have sympathy for him, this reviewer wanted only to reach through the screen and slap him a few times.

The pacing in MirrorMask isn't going to set the world on fire, either. What with this being a fantasy film and all it's understandable that certain scenes might be more languid and dreamlike than others but there are large portions of the film that are, quite simply, slow and almost dull. Were it not for the fact that the movie looks so damn good from start to finish, parts of the film could very well prove to be a chore to sit through, though even with that said some of the novelty definitely starts to wear off after the half way mark. Add to that the fact that the story doesn't really seem to know where it's going for a large portion of the running time and the movie does end up feeling about fifteen to twenty minutes too long.

Despite those gripes, however, MirrorMask does manage to get enough right to make it worth a look, though you'd best be a fan of the fantasy-magic genre before investing a whole lot into seeing it or much of the film will likely not appeal to you. Anyone who is even remotely interested in Neil Gaiman's writing and, more specifically, Dave McKean's mixed media artwork should find a lot to enjoy about this film as it literally looks and feels like one of their comic book collaborations come to life. All of Helena's artwork is done in that instantly recognizable McKean style and the way that some of the images turn into collage pieces or the way that the animation blends with the live action completely does justice to the way in which their material has been brought to the big screen.

Video:

The 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer on this release is sharp, clean and very colorful and thankfully proves to be free of most major transfer issues. There aren't any issues with edge enhancement or mpeg compression and only some slight aliasing present in the usual spots like along the lines of background buildings or vehicles (you'll also see it in some of the patterns on the costumes). Color reproduction is dead on, black levels are strong, deep and very solid and there's a very nice level of both foreground and background detail present throughout the image. Sharpness is where it should be and skin tones look lifelike and natural when they're supposed to and sufficiently 'other worldly' when required. Reds in particular are nice and bright and don't bleed into the surrounding colors at all and there's a nice range of darker hues used throughout the film quite well which this transfer handles aptly. There's a little bit of grain here and there but no problems in terms of print damage, dirt or debris on the image at all.