Recycled clichés in plodding storyline.

Rating: 1/10 (8 February 2007)

I stuck around for this movie to serve something not yet seen or experienced in dozens of related films which I was so sure this movie would provide. Sadly, that moment never came.
Although I have no complaints with the acting and setdesigns which were on par with any quality movie, there are basically three things that deprive this movie of being anything great.
1. Though truly beautifully shot, Pan's two sided scenario with the Good vs Evil Children's-picture on the one side and a drama/war-movie on the other, provides no deeper layers. A 'what you see is what you get' type of film in which the fantasy part seemed more or less something that would look nice on the adverts in combination with a superabundance of very graphic violence in a foreign movie which offers a subterfuge to sell something slight and cursory as profound and insightful.
2. Since there is no thread running through both the scenario's it is like watching two different movies which bear very little to each other nor compliment the other. Because I liked the fantasy part zealously better than the war/drama bit, I was very disappointed that it had no follow-through and that it in the end just seemed like a shameless cloned-off short-impression of movies like Alice in Wonderland, The Wizzard of Ozz and The never Ending Story, to name but a few, but never with a meaningful reference of any kind. It is almost like the writers hit behind the fact that they never even saw these movies.
3.There is just nothing subtle in the story that draws you in, I found it all annoyingly superficial and cliché. It never invites you to share the little girl's fantastic world or truly reject El Capitan's actions because it is all far too black and white. Plus the film leaves no room for any other interpretation aside from the one which is already painted elaborately on its cinematic walls. Something I find quite odd since most true children's pictures have a lot underlying messages and symbolism. The more I think about it, the more this story just seems lazily written or without any terribly interesting thought behind it. -In the end of it all, there is simply no hope-..nothing more than a flipflop of any and all sappy-happy-endings Hollywood has been laying on us for years on end.
Furthermore, with style over substance as its forté the movie tends to plod tremendously at times. And since none of the characters are really focused on, they all just seem to be stereotypes and are hence neither likable nor unlikable despite their (too) obvious good or bad demeanors. Vidal is simply bad, mom is simply weak and Ofelia was nothing more than the little girl playing with imaginary friends in the corner of the room.
This film is alas just another example of a movie where they just don't seem to be able to get it both ways (powerful story AND powerful cinematography) which is the Achilles' heel of many a film lately but which oddly doesn't seem to bother the average moviegoer nor professional movie-critic who somehow seem to think that foreign+different=Masterpiece.