Nice, but not great.

Rating: 6/10 (28 November 2006)

Pan's Labyrinth was an interesting, beautiful film to look at (most of the time) but from a simple entertainment standpoint it was just a bit on the dull side. The film is set in Spain, against the backdrop of the Spanish civil war. A young girl goes to stay with her mother and her new stepfather, a one-dimensional fascist general.
The film succeeds on many levels, mainly from cinematography and effects standpoints. But fails (for me at least) to gain much interest into the characters involved. If the film had got me to care about the characters a bit more, it would have been a great movie, but as it stood, it just lacked that depth of character that it needed to push it into the next level, leaving me not to care too much about the fate of the characters, no matter how beautiful, or ugly their world became and the script, (or at least the English translation) was average at best. (take the first interrogation scene with the stuttering man for example.)
For anyone who has seen a Hayao Miyazaki movie, the notion of a young girl retreating into fantasy to escape her troubles is nothing new. And although Pan's Labyrinth might be a masterpiece in terms of cinematography and effects, it really should've tried more to investigate the characters rather than having a simple "innocent young girl" vs. "murdering fascist general" which was just a bit too simple.