I'd sit my kids in front of it.

[dracko]

In all honesty, I'm at loss to know what exactly Guillermo del Toro intended with Pan's Labyrinth. The Spanish civil war is obviously a theme he holds close at heart, but little contrast from the rebels is given, the focus resting squarely on the franquists. The few moments they are shown are either meaningless, tedious and cheap plot exposition or instances of them acting exactly like their enemies. This is representative of the film's major problem: It fails in engaging with such a personal subject because there is very little depth to it and it is only carried by the force of its visuals. I realise it's a fairytale, and it's not a bad one at that, but that's no reason to deny building up the protagonists. The only interesting or even developed character is Captain Vidal. He's not a nice man, he's not supposed to be, but he's hardly the monster most would want to make out of him. Every detail of him is telling, whether it's the watch backstory with his father's watch - one of the few brilliant touches in the film - or his speech and mannerisms, showing his humble origins, which have done nothing to prevent him from being proud, or even the implications that he may have prepared himself for death at any moment. If anything, all the parallels made via the fairytale sections serve to further chronicle Vidal's own descent and breaking under pressure, rather than Ofelia's flight of imagination. It's just a shame such an empty and petty piece of work like Mercedes, and potential spoilers here, denies him everything in a pure act of spite and callousness, which is just about the only true act of inhumanity I care to recognise in this film.

I won't say I'm disappointed, but I did expect a Hell of a lot more from the man that made Cronos and particularly The Devil's Backbone. It's a well executed fairytale, told how fairytales should be, but little much else. I'm glad I caught it on the big screen however, and it's hardly a poor addition to del Toro's body of work, but I do hope it isn't the shape of things to come from him.