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Just perfect...

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Having previously viewed a film by directors Jeunet and Caro titled "Delicatessen", I thought I was prepared to see another one of their works. Similar to that movie, the story has a distinctively dystopian feel to it with strangely realized characters, and unless one pays attention, some of the visual weirdness may overwhelm one's focus on the story. It involves a rather mad scientist attempting to steal the dreams of young children, kidnapped and brought to his laboratory for that purpose, though their cooperation is negated when they only dream nightmares. Although I didn't have too much trouble following the story, it just felt confusing with all the surrealistic imagery the film had to offer. One of the kidnapped kids was the little brother of Ron Perlman's character, a mentally challenged circus strongman billed as Crusher Bones, though he and others referred to himself as 'One'. I'd point out some of the other strange characters in the film but to be quite honest, they were all strange and not very likeable, except for possibly the young girl named Miette (Judith Vittet) who turned out to be the nominal hero of the story with One's help. As for the deranged scientist Krank (Daniel Emilfork), someone got it correct when they described him by saying "This man's a proper nutcase".

A scientist in a surrealist society kidnaps children to steal their dreams, hoping that they slow his aging process.Ron Perlman is a great actor. He has an unusual look (not ugly, just different) and has used it to angle for some great roles in fantastic film. This one, of course, but also "Hellboy" and others. He is an unlikely success story, and good for him! And these guys make such good films, with a beautiful cinematography and a blend of the surreal and the fantastic. And plenty of humor. Arguably, "Amelie" is their best, but this is great, and so is "Delicatessen". It would be hard to pick just one.

I'm fine with movies that choose style over substance. I absolutely love Brazil, if that tells you anything. I was totally prepared to see a movie that had minimal plot and coherence, and was ready to simply immerse myself in the 'grotesque and disturbing imagery' as the rating touts. Another thing that intrigued me was the box art, which looked almost Aztec/Steampunkish. I thought that perhaps that type of imagery would dominate the film, or at least figure prominently in it. It did not. Instead the film mainly features imagery and sets from what appears to be the city from Alex Proyas's Dark City if it had been located on a French coastline in the 1940s.But getting to the point, what ruined this movie for me was not that it was to unfocused and lacking in action. It was the filmmakers insistence that everything be so insufferably f*cking goofy. I felt like I was watching a bad rip off of a Terry Gilliam film, made by somebody who completely missed what made his style so great. First of all, this is a tame movie. Not that that is my reason for disliking it, I'd just like to set the record straight. The film's rating is absolutely undeserved. It easily could have been rated PG-13, and contained nothing too disturbing for a young teenager to stomach. And even then, any scene that even began to create a sense of foreboding atmosphere was immediately ravaged by unnecessary and painfully protracted scenes of people acting like mentally damaged infants.Look, its not that I don't "get it". I understand what they were going for here, its just that they f*cked up (In my opinion). To put it simply, an otherwise chilling, absorbing film best described as Bioshock meets Brazil, is marred by disgustingly indulgent characters and camera-work by the filmmakers. For instance, the character of the mad man who kidnaps children to steal their dreams because he cannot have any of his own should be instantly tragic and threatening, a truly fantastic character simply by design. Any hopes of such a thing are tossed aside within the first few moments as he and the rest of his, what I suppose you could call family, scream directly into the camera for over a minute. Without any thought, they instantly reduce what should have been an incredible character with so much potential to a pathetic whimpering baby in the body of a man. They really seem to be TRYING to act stupid and over the top. Why? What's the point? There is no subtlety or really any care given to anything in the film, least of all that first pointless scene. It really seems as though that scene existed for the sole purpose of destroying the disturbing atmosphere that the film was trying to achieve right out of the starting gate.In the end the film had so much potential, and so much style to work with, but it was wasted in favor of the film's oh-so-quirky antics. If this is French dark absurdist comedy, perhaps I'm just more suited to British dark absurdist comedy where the comedy goes hand in hand with the atmosphere rather than the former beating the latter into submission and sticking its @ss into the camera lens.

This movie is visually rich and fairly engaging, but some key element is missing to tie everything together.The movie's narrative structure is fairly simple: Krank, the evil creation of an anonymous mad scientist, is kidnapping children to steal their dreams for himself. Krank's henchmen kidnap Denree, adopted younger brother of One, a slow-witted but good-hearted circus strongman. One bands together with pristine street urchin Miette to bring Denree back and defeat Krank in the process.However, the plot, when examined more closely, is full of implausibilities and inconsistencies. Taken together, these plot holes comprise one of the film's major flaws: the whole universe seems to exist solely for the purpose of supporting the story. Sadly, this makes it seem very contrived and one-dimensional. For example, the "cyclops" people, who are seen as a formidable force at the beginning of the film, completely vanish from the story midway through. Miette's fellow orphans seem much more like a band of ragtag adventurers out of some Disney production than real street kids. The villainous conjoined twins are plenty villainous, but they don't seem to have any real motives, making them pretty bland, predictable antagonists. And so on.Another issue I had with the movie was that a love of spectacle seemed to subsume a sense of balance and pacing. There were plenty of visually interesting moments, but they typically flashed past once and then vanished, never to be seen again. Examples include the carnival seen at the beginning of the film, the stronghold of the Cyclops-men, and the underwater home of the bearded inventor. Each of these settings suggested an interesting world in themselves, but the movie only paused in each location long enough to show us the most interesting visuals, then resumed its relentless march onward. This gave the movie a somewhat scattered feeling, as though it couldn't ever really commit to its setting.Oddly enough, this rapid stream of visuals was accompanied by a rather slow-moving plot. There are basically three phases to the movie: the call to adventure, a series of advances and setbacks, and the final confrontation with Krank. Unfortunately, both the challenges the protagonists face and the corresponding resolutions of those challenges are caused by forces entirely beyond the characters' control. Everything is external to them -- they basically bumble through the plot without ever making significant choices. Thus, the monomyth is crippled, there is no fatal flaw that the hero must confront, and the "climax" feels weak and pointless. The characters undergo no changes over the course of the film. There is no real progress, just a lot of aimless wandering.For all its shortcomings, the movie does have some good points. For the most part, the acting is good, with particularly strong performances from Judith Vittet as Miette and Ron Perelman as One. Jean-Claude Dreyfus also did a great job in his supporting role as Marcello. I didn't really care for Dominique Pinon as the unnamed creator ("The Original") and his assorted clones, but maybe that's just me -- I tend to find his exaggerated grimaces disagreeable rather than funny. As I mentioned earlier, the movie does a great job creating rich visual environments. It sort of reminds me of a concept painting for some post- apocalyptic video game - full of grimy textures, well-lit interiors with dim backgrounds, and highly saturated lighting. I actually saw this in a fairly low resolution on the internet, but the visuals still drew me in to the world of the story.In conclusion, I'd say this film is worth watching for the interesting visuals – but don't expect much more than that.