[NOTE: There are no plot spoilers in what follows, although I do talk about the general balance of the elements of the movie. I also assume you know the movie’s basic premise, as explained in any capsule review of it.]

Pan’s Labyrinth wasn’t simply not as good as I’d expected. I actually think it’s not good. Put differently: It’s a bad movie. In my opinion.

From the reviews and promotional interviews, I expected it to have two threads that reflect on one another: a story about the Spanish Civil War and a girl’s escape into a fairy tale world. In fact, this is a war story with a few occasional and relatively brief fantasy interludes. Neither story is worth watching.

The war story is hideously violent. Disgustingly even sadistically violent. But so is war, so this might be appropriate, except that the war story is also hideously cliched and shallow. The bad guy is one-dimensional. The brave freedom fighters manage to be even less than that. They are The Brave Hero, The Feisty Heroine, The Guy Who Stutters, The Rest of the Guys. The ending is very movie-ish. If the war story were shown without the fantasy elements, it’d be laughed out of town (except for the parts where audience is gagging).

The fantasy segments are, frankly, not all that original or interesting either. The characters are stock, which I’m sure is the point since they come from the imagination of an eleven-year-old. (There is one baddy who does something cool with eyeballs, although it will be familiar to kids who watched Nickelodeon’s Real Monsters cartoons.) But that doesn’t make it any better for the audience. If the fantasy segments were shown without the war story, they’d make a not all that arresting short subject. (The girl, Ivana Baquero, is a fabulous actor, though.)

Ah, but these two stories are intertwined, you say. They reflect on one another. The girl’s escape into fantasy is oh-so-poignant because of the violence of the world around her. The violence breaks through our softening of it via stories. That’s the theory, anyway. But it didn’t work for me. The fantasy didn’t intensify, illuminate or condition the war story. The war story was so cartoon-y already that the fantasy couldn’t touch it.

My wife and son both really liked it. It got an almost unprecedented 96% positives at RottenTomatoes . So, I’m probably wrong. But, heck, that’s what we have blogs for: To be wrong in public. [Tags: pan’s_labyrinth movies reviews]

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