Saturday, September 09 3:00 PM VISA SCREENING ROOM (ELGIN)
Classified by Noah Cowan as "unclassifiable", this is the director that brought us The Nine Inch Nails Movie (The Cell) in the six years back TIFF. Luckily it was also mentioned that this movie features 5 heroes against an evil aristocrat in stunning colour and locations, or I might've given it a miss altogether.
Kind of like 1,001 Arabian Nights, the story is about a story being told. Since it's a movie directed by a music video creator, everything's always changing. The story itself is a bit of a moving target, with hilarious results. It is certainly a fantastic tale (along the lines of Baron Munchausen), but a lot of the movie is also about the stuntman telling the story and the little girl who's captivated by it. Since the stuntman is confined to bed (broken legs and he'll never walk again) that means that the bulk of this side of the story is propped up by the little girl.
In my opinion, it's a bad thing when a movie depends on the performance of a young child. Of course, sometimes it works really well. If I'd had less trouble making out exactly what she was saying, I think I'd say that this would be one of the fortunate cases where we've got a movie that is excellent in all respects. Sadly, her great performance is slightly lessened by the fact that she can't quite get her lines out clearly.
Of course, in the visual splendor of this magnificent fable, does the exact wording of the script really matter? Maybe, maybe not. In then end, enjoyable for all ages.