Average Rating: 8.5/10
Reviews Counted: 197
Fresh: 188 | Rotten: 9
Pan's Labyrinth is Alice in Wonderland for grown-ups, with the horrors of both reality and fantasy blended together into an extraordinary, spellbinding fable. Told through the eyes of a little girl whose imaginary world is inhabited by nightmarish creatures, Pan's Labyrinth is a visually imaginative and allegorical take on the fears she faced in Spain during WWII.
Average Rating: 8.9/10
Critic Reviews: 40
Fresh: 40 | Rotten: 0
Pan's Labyrinth is Alice in Wonderland for grown-ups, with the horrors of both reality and fantasy blended together into an extraordinary, spellbinding fable. Told through the eyes of a little girl whose imaginary world is inhabited by nightmarish creatures, Pan's Labyrinth is a visually imaginative and allegorical take on the fears she faced in Spain during WWII.
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Average Rating: 4.1/5
User Ratings: 571,333
Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro returns to the phantasmagorical cinema that defined such early fare as Cronos and The Devil's Backbone with this haunting fantasy-drama set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War and detailing the strange journeys of an imaginative young girl who may be the mythical princess of an underground kingdom. Her mother, Carmen (Ariadna Gil), recently remarried to sadistic army captain Vidal (Sergi Lpez) and soon to bear the cruel military man's child, shy young
Dec 29, 2006 Wide
May 18, 2007
$37.4M
Picturehouse
All Critics (197) | Top Critics (40) | Fresh (200) | Rotten (9) | DVD (33)
Pan's Labyrinth suggests that fairy-tale violence helps the vulnerable process and overcome real-life conflicts and that real-life violence permanently smashes the soul and the heart.
So breathtaking in its artistic ambition, so technically accomplished, so morally expansive, so fully realized that it defies the usual critical blather. See it, and celebrate that rare occasion when a director has the audacity to commit cinema.
A violent fantasy set during the Spanish Civil War, this magical film from Guillermo del Toro manages that intellectual high-mindedness, even as it resonates on a primal, mythic level.
It explores the connection between fantasy and reality, with eyes wide open to the dangers of giving either too much credence. That it works on both levels is impressive; that it makes them so clearly one is the stuff of art.
It is an adult fairy tale that will lead grown-ups to eagerly await the day that their own children will be old enough to understand.
This backdrop of intrigue creates violent scenes that may have you turning away from the screen. Beautifully designed and full of its own strange poetry, Pan's Labyrinth is nonetheless not a children's movie. Take its 'R' rating seriously.
The close-out of Pan's Labyrinth not only underlines its status as one of the great fantasy films of all time, but also its importance as a work of refined social and historical commentary.
a captivating, albeit unstable, blend of anti-Fascist social commentary and a visually sumptuous childhood fable
Fully deserving of its place in a distinguished political-fabulist lineage
Ofelia's smock is swiped from Alice, her faun from Narnia, and her magic book from Harry Potter, Del Toro sets her fairytale apart with its unrelenting gore and misery.
It's complex, it's masterful, and it's a pastiche of priceless talent that sums up to form one of the best films made in the last ten years...
Arresting though they may be, these mind-boggling effects, shot with limpid mystery by Guillermo Navarro and accompanied by chitinous whirs and crackles on the uncanny soundtrack, don't disrupt the double narrative but intensify it.
Pan's Labyrinth is a punishing, evocative poem. It is part ferocious reality and part fearful fantasy.
Brilliant, poignant fairy tale isn't for kids.
Pan's Labyrinth us that such fantasy offers no real escape from dreadful reality.
...a dark and wonderful fairy tale for grown-ups...
...a multifaceted film of worlds within worlds that works at all levels and touches one in every direction. (HD DVD Edition)
[In the featurettes] Del Toro is wisely allowed to dominate, ensuring that everything remains engaging.
[A] beautiful but relentlessly bleak fairytale.
A little girl and her pregnant mother are relocated to an army camp to be with the unborn baby's father, an officious and sadistic captain in Franco's fascist military. Pan's Labyrinth is a gothic fantasy that sees a young girl escape into a world of fauns, fairys and political allegory to escape her cold, cruel,
March 21, 2007
Super Reviewer
A wonderful, imaginative movie that deserves to be seen. Absolutely beautiful, heartbreaking, and memorable tale of a broken family caught in the middle of war time, and the imaginative underworld that a young girl invents to help block out the horror going on around her. By far del Toro's best work, and a film that
June 24, 2007Super Reviewer
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