Lottery loser of the week

Mirrormask is a weird British fantasy that's almost worth seeing for its visuals. The dreamlike sets look like the album covers that Yes rejected. Dave McKenna directs with a visionary fervour, if no sense of humour.

As so often with British movies, it's the script (by Neil Gaiman) that disappoints. This film would dearly love to be a modern-day Alice In Wonderland but it doesn't have Lewis Carroll's wit. It has the seriousness of Philip Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy, but never achieves the same drive or depth.

Most of the film is the dream of a gloomy adolescent (Stephanie Leonidas, looking like a young Helena Bonham Carter) troubled by the fact that her mother

(Gina McKee) is undergoing an operation. The girl's feelings of guilt about her own bolshy behaviour towards her mum and dad (Rob Brydon) are translated into a fantastical quest.

The idea is promising but it's the execution that lets it down: the adventures the girl has aren't interesting or exciting, the pace is too slow, the story confuses and fails to reveal character, there aren't enough surprises and the plot seems to be made up as it goes along.

As with so many Lottery-funded movies, the script needed much more rewriting before it went into production.

MirrorMask
Cert: PG