Extremely overrated

Rating: 2/10 (5 November 2006)

This is the first time ever I felt the urge to post a comment here on IMDb and this is simply because most of the times I have more or less agreed with what was already written by others. But now, I simply cannot believe this movie has such a high user rating! Did we all watch the same thing? Reading your comments and posts my impression was that this was a movie for grown-ups. But, common! Sometimes the given "reality" of this movie seems more fairlytaleish than the actual fantasy bits. The villain could not be more plastic and banal if this were a 007 movie (kills innocent elderly people and little children, beats women, tortures little animals and alike). I mean the Nazis from Indiana Jones and those Frank Capra Why We Fight WWII propaganda movies had more character depth than this one! And the good guys are good guys for the sole premise of being human vs this ultra-evil devilish opponent. There is no solid argument why we should support them apart from the fact that the alternative is a sadistic monster. Now, this movies main idea, or so it seems, is to contrast the actual world of reality to the imaginary world of fairy tales. But they don't differ! At all! The "reality" has as little to do with reality as the fairytale. They're as archetypal, as brutal and as imaginary. And seriously, it takes a master film artist to kill a kid and get away with it (like Brian De Palma in the Untouchables, perhaps? or whoever did the movie version of the Lord of the Flies for eg). Otherwise, it seems just pathetic. Like the easiest way to appeal to emotions. For me, this death felt "undeserved" because the script was so badly crafted. It felt even offending in a way.
OK, the cinematography is great and Del Toros imagination, as we all know by now, can sometimes be stunning. But is that enough to deem it a masterpiece? I'm giving it a 2 instead of a 1 for the sole reason that its heart is in the right place.
There is a topic in the discussion board on weather the girl really died or just went back to her kingdom. I couldn't care less. There's this other movie, Ghost World, with a similar ambiguous ending. If anyone skipped it, rent it and spend a great evening watching it. Don't go waste your money on this.
Sorry about my English, Im not a native speaker.