Mirror Mirror - Review
Aug. 11th, 2012 11:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Finished watching Mirror Mirror courtesy of netflix. Well not exactly courtesy of, I paid for the privilege. Just not that much. Movies are expensive in NYC, which is why I don't go that often. Which would you pick? Rent ten movies a month for $14 in the comfort of your home or go to a crappy movie theater to see 1 movie for $15? (Granted the movies I've rented have been sitting on my tv stand for the last month...so its more like renting three movies for $14 a month, but whatever.)
Outside of some intriguing special effects and odd set and costume design choices...the movie is a bit dull. So definitely not worth the price of a movie theater. I also realized towards the end that the Grimm Fairy Tales are incredibly repetitive in structure. [ETC: Televised or film versions of Grimm Fairy Tales...and musical interpretations and adaptations. Also, I'm sure there are exceptions out there. So it's limited to the one's I've seen. The actual Fairy Tales collected by the Grimms are far more complex, of course.]
Evil Step-mother or Fairy with magical powers does everything possible to destroy young girl's chances of happiness, often imprisoning her or attempting to kill her, but a handsome prince's love breaks her free.
This one, at least, had the princess freeing the prince from the awful spell. Not sleep (we should be so lucky), no puppy love. Whoever wrote this thing apparently thought it would be funny if the queen gave the Prince a love potion that made him feel a dog's devotion for her. It is to start, but gets old really fast.
And the seven dwarves were bandits...who fought on stilts. Someone has been watching Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits (which I don't remember being that good, but it seems to be everyone's favorite Gilliam flick at the moment, so maybe I should re-watch it at some point?) At any rate the dwarves beat up the Prince, who let's face it is a bit of jerk, albeit a pretty jerk, and leave him half-naked hanging upside down in the forest. Whereupon Snow White rescues him but doesn't find him any clothes. He goes to the Queen, who reluctantly finds him clothes so she can concentrate. This happens twice, they stretch the dwarves as acrobatic and successful bandits routine as far as they can go. The film is trying to be funny, but isn't quite accomplishing it. You can feel the strain.
This is one of those movies where the best lines and bits were in the trailer. If you saw the trailer? You heard the best jokes already.
Oh...when Snow White is told the only way to break the puppy love spell on the Prince is to kiss him. She states it is her first kiss. The dwarves being romantically inclined go out of their way to fix her up for it. Including smearing her lips with strawberries. So that when she kisses the Prince and wakes him from the spell...he tells her that her lips taste of strawberries...
Which would have worked for me and been mildly amusing...if it weren't for the fact that the Buffy fandom has forever spoiled my textual interpretation of that particular line. They went nuts a few weeks back regarding the meaning of the phrase - she tastes like strawberries. Apparently in certain contexts - it refers to a woman who trades favors for sex. I hope whoever wrote the script to Mirror Mirror did not know that. There's no way of telling. Can argue it either way.
What worked? They had some innovative bits. The mirror - was actually the Queen's reflection of herself. The Queen tells the story. She talks to the mirror by going into another watery world where a white version of herself resides. The monsters are wooden puppets (scary) and a Chinese Dragon (wickedly cool). Snow's father isn't dead, just missing. Snow never eats an apple nor is she put under a spell requiring saving. In some respects its a more modernistic take on the tale.
But the execution was ham-handed and sloppy. Granted the story which has been told to death by now...doesn't give you much. But the more traditional Disney cartoon had more charm.
Been reading Under the Skin by Michael Faber, which is about as far from a romance novel as one can get. This is a book that sort of defies description. You can't really describe it without giving it away. It relies almost entirely on the reveal or plot twist. The book is a mystery of sorts - but the mystery is what in the hell the protagonist is doing, what she physically is, and who she's involved with and why they are doing whatever it is they are doing with the hitch-hiker's she's picking up on the side of the road.
It feels a bit like Philip K. Dick's Three Stigmata of Palmer K Eldritch meets Animal Farm by way of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal/Guillivar's Travels and Rod Sterling's Planet of Apes, with maybe the short story "To Serve Man" thrown in - on an acid trip.
Gripping yes. Also erotic, in a really disturbing and somewhat creepy way. Not to mention just plain weird. Plus a whole new take on the gender bias/gender war theme - which seems to be permeating my reading and viewing choices of late.
Does however remind me not to ever go hitch-hiking or to pick up hitch-hikers, and how relieved I am to be living in a large city where such things are unnecessary. You may find cities scary...but the rural and small town regions of the world scare me more. Wide open spaces with nothing but open farm-land and barbed fences for miles and miles...are the locals that most horror stories are derived from.
Outside of some intriguing special effects and odd set and costume design choices...the movie is a bit dull. So definitely not worth the price of a movie theater. I also realized towards the end that the Grimm Fairy Tales are incredibly repetitive in structure. [ETC: Televised or film versions of Grimm Fairy Tales...and musical interpretations and adaptations. Also, I'm sure there are exceptions out there. So it's limited to the one's I've seen. The actual Fairy Tales collected by the Grimms are far more complex, of course.]
Evil Step-mother or Fairy with magical powers does everything possible to destroy young girl's chances of happiness, often imprisoning her or attempting to kill her, but a handsome prince's love breaks her free.
This one, at least, had the princess freeing the prince from the awful spell. Not sleep (we should be so lucky), no puppy love. Whoever wrote this thing apparently thought it would be funny if the queen gave the Prince a love potion that made him feel a dog's devotion for her. It is to start, but gets old really fast.
And the seven dwarves were bandits...who fought on stilts. Someone has been watching Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits (which I don't remember being that good, but it seems to be everyone's favorite Gilliam flick at the moment, so maybe I should re-watch it at some point?) At any rate the dwarves beat up the Prince, who let's face it is a bit of jerk, albeit a pretty jerk, and leave him half-naked hanging upside down in the forest. Whereupon Snow White rescues him but doesn't find him any clothes. He goes to the Queen, who reluctantly finds him clothes so she can concentrate. This happens twice, they stretch the dwarves as acrobatic and successful bandits routine as far as they can go. The film is trying to be funny, but isn't quite accomplishing it. You can feel the strain.
This is one of those movies where the best lines and bits were in the trailer. If you saw the trailer? You heard the best jokes already.
Oh...when Snow White is told the only way to break the puppy love spell on the Prince is to kiss him. She states it is her first kiss. The dwarves being romantically inclined go out of their way to fix her up for it. Including smearing her lips with strawberries. So that when she kisses the Prince and wakes him from the spell...he tells her that her lips taste of strawberries...
Which would have worked for me and been mildly amusing...if it weren't for the fact that the Buffy fandom has forever spoiled my textual interpretation of that particular line. They went nuts a few weeks back regarding the meaning of the phrase - she tastes like strawberries. Apparently in certain contexts - it refers to a woman who trades favors for sex. I hope whoever wrote the script to Mirror Mirror did not know that. There's no way of telling. Can argue it either way.
What worked? They had some innovative bits. The mirror - was actually the Queen's reflection of herself. The Queen tells the story. She talks to the mirror by going into another watery world where a white version of herself resides. The monsters are wooden puppets (scary) and a Chinese Dragon (wickedly cool). Snow's father isn't dead, just missing. Snow never eats an apple nor is she put under a spell requiring saving. In some respects its a more modernistic take on the tale.
But the execution was ham-handed and sloppy. Granted the story which has been told to death by now...doesn't give you much. But the more traditional Disney cartoon had more charm.
Been reading Under the Skin by Michael Faber, which is about as far from a romance novel as one can get. This is a book that sort of defies description. You can't really describe it without giving it away. It relies almost entirely on the reveal or plot twist. The book is a mystery of sorts - but the mystery is what in the hell the protagonist is doing, what she physically is, and who she's involved with and why they are doing whatever it is they are doing with the hitch-hiker's she's picking up on the side of the road.
It feels a bit like Philip K. Dick's Three Stigmata of Palmer K Eldritch meets Animal Farm by way of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal/Guillivar's Travels and Rod Sterling's Planet of Apes, with maybe the short story "To Serve Man" thrown in - on an acid trip.
Gripping yes. Also erotic, in a really disturbing and somewhat creepy way. Not to mention just plain weird. Plus a whole new take on the gender bias/gender war theme - which seems to be permeating my reading and viewing choices of late.
Does however remind me not to ever go hitch-hiking or to pick up hitch-hikers, and how relieved I am to be living in a large city where such things are unnecessary. You may find cities scary...but the rural and small town regions of the world scare me more. Wide open spaces with nothing but open farm-land and barbed fences for miles and miles...are the locals that most horror stories are derived from.
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no subject
Date: 2012-08-12 06:25 am (UTC)Evil Step-mother or Fairy with magical powers does everything possible to destroy young girl's chances of happiness, often imprisoning her or attempting to kill her, but a handsome prince's love breaks her free.
Err, no. Hänsel und Gretel: Gretel saves her brother, who is imprisoned throughout the story. Jorinde und Joringel: Jorinde saves her lover, who is imprisoned throughout the story. Allerleihrauh: villain is the old king who wants to marry his daughter (I kid you not), so she runs away to the woods and lives in the wilderness, where she eventually meets the her love. The Seven Swans: heroine lives with her bewitched brothers, eventually breaks the spell by seven years of silence and weaving shirts of nettle. Rapunzel: as opposed to popular conception, the prince doesn't save Rapunzel in that one. He gets her pregnant and caught. The witch then sends Rapunzel away and blinds the prince. He errs blindly through the world as a beggar until he finds her again (raising twin children on her own), and her tears give him back his sight. (Note: no defeat whatsoever of the witch.) Tischlein Deck Dich: evil goat makes father banish his sons. Sons go through hardships, win fortune, return home to banish goat. Der Fischer und seine Frau: fisherman catches magic fish who promises to fulfill every wish in return for freedom. Fisherman's wife wishes for an increasing number of things and in the end for being god. This leaves fisherman and his wife sans magical riches in the hut where they started the story. I could go on.
In conclusion, it's worth actually reading the stories instead of going by cinematic versions of them.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-12 01:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-12 04:05 pm (UTC)