Mirror Mirror

Tarsem Singh Dhandwar’s first directorial attempt was with a movie that very few could understand. I was part of the other half of people. The Cell starring J Lo was a movie that had so many layers in it that one got lost in a matter of minutes. Regretably, it didn’t work out. I haven’t seen his next movie – The Fall – but a curious fact presented itself to me while researching for Mirror Mirror. Tarsem was the Assistant Director for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Now I haven’t heard of any director who would have gone back to being an Assistant after directing 2 full length features. Speaks volumes about the man’s courage and I guess it did manifest itself a bit in Immortals which released last year (and was part of the list of movies I missed ).

With Mirror Mirror, Tarsem has given himself a chance to be considered as a director of substance and more importantly, one who wants to stick around for a while. Tarsem’s take on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is made very slickly with the right mix of special effects and performances. I guess it was only a matter of time that someone took the story of Red Rose’s sister to the big screen in a big way. And it was also only a matter of time before Julia Roberts played a negative role isn’t it? So Tarsem kills 2 birds with one stone.

The Evil Queen (Julia Roberts) has schemed away over the years and finally uses her magic to get rid of the king (Sean Bean). Over the next few years, she fritters away all the money that is available to her and resorts to more and more taxes to take care of her lavish lifestyle. She is assisted in this effort by her timid and reluctant aide Brighton (Nathan Lane). Her source of power comes from the Mirror which is beautifully shown at right angles to the world. The Mirror keeps warning her about the fact that magic comes with its own price and is never without any adverse effects. But she pays little heed and continues with her ways.

When Snow White (Lily Collins) turns eighteen, she ventures out of the castle and first bumps into Prince Alcott (Armie Hammer) and then into the seven dwarfs who play giants by using flexible stilts. Their names – Butcher, Half Pint, Grub, Napoleon, Chuckles, Grim and Wolf. Together, they get the evil queen to her knees and regain control of the castle.

Mirror Mirror is a wonderful adaptation of the Brothers Grimm classic. Jason Keller (Machine Gun Preacher) and Melissa Wallack (Meet Bill) have combined to give us an exciting adventure. It is peppered with some nice corny dialogues – corny but really nice. Like, “Don’t do that. The prince has to come in to save the princess. It has been focus grouped and it works the best”. And the performances across the board are near perfect with Julia Roberts taking the cake. I really liked this one. I am going to stick my neck out and give it a 6.5 on 10. Try and catch up with it on the big screen.

Trailer on http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi3708919321/

The Nutcracker 3D

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky created a ballet called The Nutcracker way back in 1892. Since then there have been a few zillion movies and an equal number of plays have been made with the same name and definitely the same or similar stories. This time around a director with an equally complicated sounding name as the creator has decided to give us the first 3D version of this famed ballet. He goes by the name of Andrey Konchalovskiy. Have we heard of this guy before? Yep. He would be the same guy who gave us those epic movies that we grew up with called “Homer and Eddie” and “Tango and Cash”. He has just added an “i” to his name which hasn’t really helped much. Surely he must go back to the numerologist who advised him to add this to his name to get his money back (Do they have money back guarantees on numerology?)


For those who are unfamiliar with the story of the Nutcracker it is about this teenage girl called Mary (Elle Fanning – yep she is Dakota’s younger sister who is a bit grown up) who is tormented most of the time by her younger brother Max (Aaron Michael Drozin) who breaks up most of her toys. Her parents (Richard E. Grant & Yuliya Vysotskaya – whats with all these tongue twisters???) don’t spend too much time with the kids really parenting. But they care a lot about their children to ensure that the kids have all the comforts in the world including a huge house replete with butlers and a nanny Frau Eva (Frances de la Tour). All seems to be well at the household till one evening around Christmas the children’s godfather, Uncle Albert (Nathan Lane) – an Albert Einstein look alike with an accent that would put most German’s to shame – comes over to give the kids Christmas gifts. He gives Mary a special wooden toy called the Nutcracker whose basic utility as the name suggests is to crack nuts. But it turns out that the toy is a very special one and is actually a Prince (Charlie Rowe) whose country has been taken over by the evil Rat King (John Turturro) and his mother, the Rat Queen (Frances de la Tour – again) who want to “RATtify” the whole world. It is now upto Mary to save the country from being converted to Rats.

The Nutcracker 3D is a fantasy. You must be aware of the love that I have for fantasies as a genre of movies but this one is very honestly not too well executed. I am sure it had the capabilities of becoming a huge hit but the 3D effects are bad and the acting very average. The special effects without the 3D seem to be quite good and the tongue twister director is able to generate excitement about the concept. However, fantasies are expected to be significantly larger than life and that doesn’t quite come through in the final product. Having said that, it would go well with kids because of the entire concept of fairies and flying and talking chimpanzees and jokers and Christmas trees that grow huge overnight etc. etc. etc. Watch it for your kids if you must. 5 on 10 is my verdict. Have seen many better fantasy movies.

Watch the trailer at http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi3906472217/