text: I didn't really HATE Mirrormask. I just really wanted more from a movie than pretty visuals. The movie begins with a young girl named Helana who works in a circus. But while other children (supposedly) want to run away to the circus she only wants to run away FROM the circus. During a heated argument with her mother, Helana wishes she would drop dead. Bad move. The mother gets ill with...something (presumably cancer) and needs surgery. On the night before surgery she dreams she travels to a wonderful world composed of her her dreams and nightmares where she "finds herself". Personally the movie got crap for me as soon as she started dreaming. The early scenes show the weird and wonderful world of the circus and then contrast it with the bleakness of the hospital and the filth of an apartment block. But a soon as she dreams the whole films shifts to CGI land where nearly everything is a computer image. The problem is that this dream world has none of the mystery and wonder it should have. while films like the Wizard of Oz seemed enticing to explore Mirrormask shoves images in our faces and then snatches them away to give us another image. There's little rhyme or reason to the design in this film and even though some things are very pretty (the librarian is a masterpiece) they just disappear so quickly that they're soon forgotten. Helana and her sidekick Valentine are annoying at best and unbearable at worst. Overall Mirrormask is like a pretty stake that you bite and find out is actually ash. Stick to the real world kids.