Guillermo Del Toro is a guy who gets a lot of love from critics and fan boys alike. Whatever his charms, they fall on deaf ears with me. His films are pleasant enough, they seem to be colorful, and usually have cool monsters. But let me tell you, they bore me to tears. I can’t make it through Hellboy or Blade II and whatever it is that appeals to people about Devil’s Backbone it’s lost on me. Whatever spark it is in cinema that I respond to, his films seem to be devoid of.
I don’t think the guy sucks or anything, and but I’m baffled by his popularity, what in his resume leads people to regard him so highly. Mimic, Hellboy, Blade II? All mediocre films on a good day.
His new movie is Pan’s Labyrinth and it’s clearly his most critically acclaimed to date but it also clearly exemplifies what I find so underwhelming in his work.
The movie takes place in the mountains of Spain, in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. It stars a talented actress named Ivana Baquero as Ofelia, a young girl who escapes from the turmoil of her life into an elaborate world of make believe. We’ve all seen a million movies like this, Narnia, The Labyrinth, Never Ending Story, etc. This film has some cool effects and monsters but nothing to distinguish itself in the genre.
There’s another storyline about the adults who are caught up in some drama about political intrigue and espionage. The two halves of the movie go together about as badly as possible. Plus the story moves like molasses, this girl spends most of the movie crawling around in weird tunnels. For all their imagination and lavish production, nothing happens in these fantasy sequences.
I don’t hate this movie, nor do I think Del Toro’s a hack. I’d give the movie a respectable two and half out of four stars. There’s at least one classic monster for the ages, and I really enjoyed the innovative effects as well, which are a refreshing change of pace from the wall to wall CGI we see in most films which all starts to look the same.
I guess I’m glad these films have an audience that enjoys them. I just wish I’d stop hearing so much about how great Del Toro is only to be inevitably under whelmed by his films.
Popularity: 13% [?]
