Mirror Mirror (2012)

I have to start this out by saying I was predisposed not to like this film. I am not really very much of a Julia Roberts fan, but I'm not sure that it's entirely her fault. My first exposure to her was in Pretty Woman, which a girl in my dorm owned and played all the time. I can't think of how many times I got stuck watching part of that film. No really, I can't think of it, because it will make me digress or something and I'll go all batshit crazy. Still, maybe that wasn't as bad as our one term RA, one term because the first term RA who coincidentally had the same name as this guy, totally sucked at this job, but now I really am digressing (and you thought I meant regress), but this guy would play the Sound of Music every Friday and Saturday night - for three months straight - to draw in the unsuspecting drunk girls who were wandering around in hopes that he might get lucky. I can not make this shit up. I wish I could. On several occasions I went looking for a particular drunk girl who was affiliated with me and found her there and on at least three other occasions was contacted by my peers to intercede on their behalf and retrieve their drunken, bewildered lady friends. I was a junior still living in a dorm at this point, so was like the old man of the castle so to speak. In those days I literally did not know what fear was - anxiety...humiliation...sure, but not fear. I would march in and retrieve the half dozen or so girls and make sure they all got home. I don't know what this dude would have done if he had ever ended up with one of these drunken girls alone. Part of me says he was such a bumpkin that he wouldn't have done anything, but the other part of me - the part of me that has come into being since those long ago days - thinks that any man who cooks up a way to attract drunk girls to his room so he can fool around (the worst kept secret, at least among the guys, in our dorm) probably doesn't have a lot of scruples. It does help to know that the last time I saw him, the plumpish doofus who was never as smart as he first seemed, was devoting his life to selling business cards for a living and had become outright round and was going bald, all of this only four or five years after graduation.
Anyhoo, that movie strongly influenced me against Julia Roberts. Yet, I have seen her in films and can admit that not only did she not suck, that she was indeed quite good. I particularly her in the Ocean's Eleven franchise and Pret-a-Porter. But not in this movie. Sorry, Julia. If you had that certain je ne sais quois that Nathan Lane possesses, I could have bought a campy, evil queen and actually embraced that as it would have more matched the feeling of other parts of the film. But, she doesn't have it, and even though Lane does, the scenes in which they are together just accentuates her lack of this stuffness. Maybe Joan Cusack has it, or Kristen Wiig. But, Hollywood doesn't think them beautiful enough to pull off the "fairest of them all". Maybe they can't, but if you're going campy with your movie, then go campy.
I also had been told this was not the greatest movie. I know that one should go into these things with as little preconception as possible, right? Or not. I trust my friend's opinion on these matter, particularly concerning fairy tales and fables. But, I wanted to see for myself. It could be good, or at least have some hidden gem moments. I am right, because it totally did. But, she was also right. Not that good of a movie.
There is also a third reason, and until George Lucas did his Star Wars prequels, I would have called this the Scrappy Doo effect. This is a reference to a reboot of the classic Scooby Doo comics in which they changed a lot and added a munchkin by the name of Scrappy Doo. In case you're still wondering, I think he totally sucked. Lucas changed all of this by raising the bar, or should it be lowering the bar on how something can suck by changing a formula that works by taking out some essential, if minor, elements and adding a totally annoying character who is unaware of any faults he may have. Yes, I mean Jar-Jar Binks. These are really just two obvious examples of a phenomenon in popular media endemic to the United States since World War II that is trying to add a touch of comedy to a serious story to take the edge off. This is why there is Orko in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, or Snarf in the Thundercats, or any of the Witwickys in the Transformers cartoons from the 80s, or most any Eddie Murphy movie where Eddie is both the serious character and the comedic distraction. I hate to say it, but it's Brighton, Nathan Lane's character in this film. Don't get me wrong, I love Nathan Lane, but his character in this film is a comedic distraction to keep the queen from being just detetably evil, hoping to make her tolerantly evil - tolerant enough to sit through the whole film. I thought this every time I saw a trailer for this film. But, I kept hoping that it would be more campy, in which case Brighton would not have been out of place and thus not served the same purpose.
There were two things during the film that I didn't like, and oddly enough one was the special effects. Well, not all of the specail effects. Most of them were quite good. But when the queen goes through the mirror - which was very cool and a cool concept - the huts on the lake look like CGI huts. They can look real, or look cartoony, or look like they're made of plastic, but they can not look like they are CGI. Can not.
The other issue which bothered me were the dwarves on stilts - which are another cool concept and looked cool - there are scenes of them doing their thing and the stunt people do not look like the actors playing the dwarves. Sure, they were dressed up the same, but they were in general thinner and in general possessing arms of a longer proportion to their bodies than the actors. This is one of those little things that I should never notice, just like the CGI.
I did watch it all the way through, though. It does have some things going for it. There was more than a nod to an Alice in Wonderland a la the cartoon version look. Obviously the party that the queen throws is this theme, but the gentry's hair and clothing styles throughout the whole film lived up to this and I thought were quite good. I also like watching the Prince and Princess interact. If they had more screen time, it would have been a better movie - I mean more screen time together with appropriately witty banter of course.
Then comes the ending of the film. I liked the servants on ice skates at the wedding of the queen and the Prince. When I first saw them, I immediately thought of Mel Brooks and Hitler on Ice. And then I thought that this movie likely would have been a whole lot better if it had been a musical. It would ahve solved so many problems. First and foremost would have been a different actress as the queen. It would also pretty much have guaranteed the campiness needed for this film to have succeeded.
As the story resolves, lo and behold if the King ain't really still alive and it's none other than Sean Bean. What a pleasant surprise. The actor, 'cause the King still being alive was not a surprise. I really like Bean who hasn't done me wrong yet. Sure, the films don't always work for me, but he does.
And finally the finale...here's the musical that I wanted. I almost thought it was going to go a Bollywood route, which would have been sweeeeeeet! Instead, we got a Shrek style ending if Shrek had used an original song and been live action. This did keep me from hating this film. Well, this and Sean Bean. And the dwarves.

Mirror Mirror on IMDB