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| Pan's Labyrinth |
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  (6/10)
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Runtime: 112 |
| Public Rating: 9.65 (23 votes) |
Director: Guillermo del Toro |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Horror/Fantasy/Drama |
Year: 2006 |
| Writer(s): Guillermo del Toro |
| Distributor: Picturehouse Films |
| Reviewed by: Friday and Saturday Night Critic |
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Additional review(s) by:
Mel Valentin [10/10] (view).
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Disappointing. Oh, God, I wanted to like this movie more. It’s essentially “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe” remade with bugs and gore. That’s still an improvement though. The aftermath of the Spanish Civil War replaces WWII and the Fascists replace the Nazis. Your jaw will drop with how uninventive and one-dimensionally evil the villain (Sergi Lopez) is; he’s the kind of heavy who should only show up for a five minute cameo to contrast the main, layered villain. This seems especially lazy, considering all the humanism Hemingway crammed into the Spanish Civil War in “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”
As the mindlessly loathsome Fascist and the rebels alternately hassle lonely girl Ofelia she flees into a fantasy world where the fawn Pan has laid three tests for her to prove that she is really the princess of the underworld (she flees from fascism to a monarchy – say what?). Something bad happens, she imagines herself somewhere else that symbolically represents what's going on, okay, get it-got it-good, move on. Still, director Guillermo Del Toro displays considerable visual flair in several places. The highpoint is the eyeless, loose-skinned baby-eating monstrosity with stumpy legs. The fawn himself is part-man, part-deer, and a lot of tree. As per usual, Del Toro infuses the movie with Catholic imagery, from the Notre Dame windows in the underworld’s palace, to the baby-young mother-father God tombstone.
“Pan’s Labyrinth” is also an exceptionally noisy film, cluttered with insect sounds, creaking floors, crackling fires, and crunchy clothing, all underneath the score. Women swallowing and pursing lips is popular, too, although they don’t reach the pathological level of “Volver.”
Comparing “Pan’s Labyrinth” with Del Toro’s previous America features “Hellboy” and “Blade II” really is apples and oranges, although it’s fun to think about the show-stopping perfection of Hellboy’s self-application of a power-sander to his forehead.
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