"Mirror Mirror" features fanciful, gorgeous costumes, elaborate sets, and a comic, slightly ironic retelling of the story of Snow White and the evil queen. But this spectacle is rather hollow in the end, with cardboard cutout figures moving through tableaux on the stage, as if moved by unseen strings and magnets under the floorboards. While I admire the sheer audacity and lushness of Tarsem Singh's imagination, there is too often, as here, a tendency to dwell on the surface, the trappings rather than involve the audience. For me, nothing he has done since has matched the magical mixture of "The Fall" (2006), where flights of fantastical imaginings and fabulous fables were balanced with a real story of hurting people finding their way.
Monday, April 2, 2012
Mirror, Mirror **
"Mirror Mirror" features fanciful, gorgeous costumes, elaborate sets, and a comic, slightly ironic retelling of the story of Snow White and the evil queen. But this spectacle is rather hollow in the end, with cardboard cutout figures moving through tableaux on the stage, as if moved by unseen strings and magnets under the floorboards. While I admire the sheer audacity and lushness of Tarsem Singh's imagination, there is too often, as here, a tendency to dwell on the surface, the trappings rather than involve the audience. For me, nothing he has done since has matched the magical mixture of "The Fall" (2006), where flights of fantastical imaginings and fabulous fables were balanced with a real story of hurting people finding their way.
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