Unfortunately, I'm underwhelmed
Everyone talks about this film. "Oh Pan's Labyrinth is so good!" "It's an awesome movie!".
I had such high hopes and expectations. And almost none of them were met. My fault? Probably.
Some of my thoughts:
1. The girl was not annoying or a brat, except when she ate from the Pale Man's table. I felt like it was much less believable than when say, Abu from Aladdin tried to steal the large Gem in the cave. Abu is a monkey, a pickpocket monkey, and I would expect him to completely forget rules. Not a 12 (?) year old girl. It felt so forced, her failing that challenge. You really, really couldn't have waited 15 minutes to get something from the kitchen? Really?
2. "Sadistic stepfather". Sadistic? No, I didn't think he was at all. I think he was appropriately commandeering for a, you know, military captain. Yeah, people will torture for information, that's par for the course. I've seen far, far worse out of people in his position with less power. Amon Goeth he is not. I expected him to beat the living *beep* out of the girl or to abuse the mother what with the word "sadistic" being applied to him, but he didn't do either, to my disappointment. He was just used to people following his orders. He didn't even verbally or emotionally abuse the mother or Ofelia except at the dinner party (paraphrasing "She forgets that people aren't interested in her stories"...well, that's a dickish thing to say but I wouldn't consider it to be overly abusive, just cold) and before the climax of the film when he sent her to her room (he slapped her once or twice and not even that hard). He's supposed to be a "bad force" in this film but despite his chauvinism and ruthlessness, I actually empathized with him. He was the most compelling and interesting character out of all of them.
3. The magic and fantasy elements. I wanted so much more. The faun was creepy as hell but in an entertaining way. I also conjured up this idea of how the film may have gone before seeing it (having heard so much about it). I really thought it was going to be an Alice in Wonderland type story, but instead it basically ended up like Bridge to Terabithia or the Spiderwick Chronicles or whatever.
I really wanted to like this film. I really wanted this film to be what I thought it was going to be, to be honest, and it wasn't, hence my 6/10 score. I was reminded of Jim Henson's "The Labyrinth" only because of, well, the word Labyrinth in the title and because it seems to be mashed a bit together...
That ending also felt very heavy, as well. Just...come on, dude.
So yeah, you could say I'm disappointed. If you love this film, that's great. These are just my problems with it.
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You shut your mouth when you're talking to me!