Not a disaster, but jarred

Rating: 6/10 (5 May 2010)

Yes, spoilers. But I usually write reviews in the assumption that any readers I get may have seen the movie already.
So I'll start with the very first thing I didn't like - The ending. This whole movie, I was believing the "fantasy" portion was "real" in this movie's particular reality. I thought the girl was in sufficient danger with the child-eating demon. I even thought the Faun was more sinister than he let on. And I would have been fine with any "sad" ending. What I did not like is the movie treating me like a moron. At the very end, the girl's death puts her in her Princess-like station with a father and a mother who looks amazingly like her previously dead real-life mother.
As in: It's basically her "Heaven".
As an atheist, I'm not prudish. I don't get angry when people say "God Bless You" when I sneeze, and sometimes I even visit my friend's church to socialize. But somehow this movie succeeded in offending me. It tricked me. It all turned out to be the imaginings of a girl.
Or was it?
How did she get the chalk? How did she escape a locked door? How did the "Mandrake root" actually seem to work, and it's effects immediately diminished as it was burned? Was all of it real, or imagination?
I don't mind multiple interpretations to things but It would have been nice to be directed to one or the other.
...But I digress.
I read a lot of the reviews under "Hated" (as I often do, because I already know what I liked in a film so I don't need to read a dozen reviews of "this was amazing"), and I don't believe the movie was completely awful.
The acting was fine, especially that of the Captain. They did a good job making you hate him, but his acting was superb. His facial emotions, his movements were all fluid and believable for a man with that personality. He stole every scene he was in, and despite his cruel bludgeoning at the beginning, I couldn't wait to see him in the next scene.
Everyone else was mediocre, which was fine in this semi-realistic portrayal of War-life. I liked the girl, but the split War-Drama/Fantasy was jarring, but I ran with it.
And one final, minor complaint; Wasn't this advertised as a children's fantasy? Goodness me, I can't imagine what people thought after seeing it in a theater.