Force Fed Films: "Pan's Labyrinth"

In this week’s edition of Force Fed Films, Jim made me watch “Pan’s Labyrinth”, a fantasy movie based on a little girl Ofelia (Ivana Baquero). Jim did show me a trailer for this movie and it really looked cool, I saw a monster with eyes in its hands and some horror gore. I knew this was going to be a mythical creature story, so I was real excited to watch this movie. I was actually quite surprised to find out this movie was all in Spanish, making me glad to watch a foreign film because Hollywood movies gets real predictable at times. Anyways, read what I thought of this movie after this jump.

The story takes place in Spain during the World War 2 era and Ofelia is traveling with her mom to her new stepfather. This stepfather is a no mercy kind of Captain for the Spanish army. They live in a house which is right beside the area he needs to defend from the opposing rebels. The other part of the story is that Ofelia later follows a fairy to a labyrinth where she meets a Faun. The Faun tells her if she follows and completes three tasks successfully, she can live with her true father in a new land and be princess for life. I really liked this story, it is interesting and with the fantasy flair added on, it kept it fresh and interesting.

The best part of this movie is obviously the creatures she encounters, even though there are only a few; 3 fairies, the Faun and a weird ass monster. They were all well created and played out wonderfully. I especially loved the monster; it had removable eyes in which he put into the palms of his hands to see. He first fattened children, than would eat them. Maybe someone should tell him an old witch tried to do that and failed. The Faun was cool mainly for the reason you couldn’t tell if you could trust him or not. He carried himself with two attitudes; a trusting kind creature and a dreadful masterminded creature. Also, because the motives of the Faun kept me guessing throughout the movie on the real motives for this monster, that was interesting.

Coolest monster, or coolest monster ever?

But that ends it all for the good parts. I felt the movie was a complete let down. I mean, the mysterious and suspenseful parts were complete garbage; I was able to call out everything that was going to happen. Secondly, the story about the Captain fighting the rebels was boring. The action was boring and tried to make it cool by showing some over the top blood and gore. I really wish they did more on the fantasy part of the story and less about everything else. Lastly, I really hated the main character Ofelia for the one reason that she must be the stupidest human to have walked this Earth. One part of the movie, she was told not to eat anything when going into the room with the monster. As she succeeds in getting what she needed from the room she thought, “Oh what the hell, one grape won’t hurt”. Even though the three accompanying fairies told her not to and the Faun specifically told her not to, she did and guess what, the monster woke up and nearly shredded her for lunch. I could go on and on about the stupidity of this one 9 year old girl. Though, I don’t think you guys would like to read me spoiling the movie for you.

To finalize, I was utterly disappointed with this movie. It started off real well and had so much potential but it was sad that I found this movie just boring and annoying 70% of the time. Again, if they focused more on the fantasy and less on the boring filler, I would have loved this movie. I was surprised to see that this movie won 3 Oscars, but not surprisingly enough it was for Art Direction, Cinematography and Makeup. Kind of like Alice in Wonderland, it’s a damn pretty movie, to bad everything else was a letdown. If you want to see this movie, go ahead, but please take your brain out before you view this film, maybe you’ll have more fun with it than I did. I feel really bad about being the only guy in the world to not like this movie.