Great story with some minor poor decisions.

Rating: 7/10 (24 January 2007)

Warning: this review is a discussion fraught with spoilers. Please don't read it if you don't want key elements of the plot given away to you.
Guillermo del Toro has brought us another story along the archetypal "lonely bookworm uses fantasy to escape horrors of reality" arch, but has brought it to a stunning new level. Within is the typical orphaned life, evil stepmother (stepfather...), and classic fantasy images such as fauns and fairies, but set in fascist Spain, it is also an extreme example of the power of hope within horrendous evil.
It's a beautiful and stunning movie for the most part. The characters are mostly engaging and I love the detail in the character animation. Some of the violence is very harrowing, especially in a movie about a subject most people associate with children's entertainment, and the movie is rather effective in many ways at taking one's breath away.
I have a couple problems with it, though, mostly as it pertains to some of the decisions made by the characters. First of all...
1) When in a fantasy/fairytale situation where someone tells you not to eat the food... don't eat the food. As in, when a creepy faceless monster guy is sitting at the table and you haven't seen the food prepared, DON'T EAT THE FOOD. There was really no reason for her to either. Del Toro could have had the same action sequence when she opens the wrong door instead, and that would have put greater impact with her decision at the end to disobey anyway. What would have made a much stronger impact, I think, would be if she opened the wrong door, retrieved that knife, the monster awoke, she barely escapes, and the the Faun gets upset with her because she didn't listen to the fairies, making her decision at the end to protect her brother an even more important thing. Instead, for really no reason shown within the film at all, she has to eat the food. NO REASON. She's familiar with fairy tales, she should know better. I know it's her imagination we're dealing with here, but she should still know better.
2) When in a violent situation where you've just stabbed someone evil and need to escape, kill him! She already showed her lack of hesitation in hurting him, she had complete control over the situation, and she needed to get rid of him in order to have more time to escape before being found out. Instead she gives some weak warning about the little girl and nearly gets captured anyway. Stupid stupid stupid. And no, she did NOT know his warning to kill the little girl if anything happened, so she couldn't act upon that knowledge.
3) Why is the little girl's mother attracted to this guy in the first place? That was never answered satisfactorily to me.
Other than those (some may call them) nitpicks, this movie was great. I for one wouldn't mind owning it when it comes out on DVD, and I'd still recommend people go to see it.
--PolarisDiB