text: Well, that was sure a waste of Dave McKean's talents, wasn't it? Don't get me wrong: when it comes to graphic design, Dave McKean may be the best in the world right now. The layered, textured look he can accomplish with just a few pencil lines on rough paper make the efforts of people like Peter Greenaway and David Fincher look like what they are: hackwork. McKean has been the godfather of a revolution in the look of comics, film, even magazine ads which borrow the distinctive collage effect he has pioneered.<br /><br />But this movie? It's junk. Complete junk. The story, from Neil Gaiman, is, unfortunately, exactly what Gaiman has been giving us ever since he ripped off Clive Barker for the first time: a pseudo-mythic, overblown dreamscape, populated by characters which have Titles in All Capital Letters rather than names. Everything is allegory, to the point that it is impossible to get any human drama, emotion, or empathy from anyone involved. People make pithy postulations, speaking in riddles which bring to mind what Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead might have sounded like if Tom Stoppard had suffered a debilitating stroke halfway through its composition. Really, Gaiman, get over yourself. You're not a prophet. You're a poser.<br /><br />McKean's directing doesn't help - his pacing is poor, taking fully half an hour to actually rev himself up for the main picaresque plot, and then simply providing a disconnected sequence of events, none of them given any weight. The monsters don't menace because they're not foreshadowed, simply thrown at the screen. The plot doesn't engage because we don't really care about the rancid little protagonists. Half the dialogue, muttered into into shirt fronts and ubiquitous masks, is unintelligible.<br /><br />Some of the visuals are pretty, and I'm sure the fanboys will lick it up. Pity. Think of the amount of really good work McKean could have produced if he hadn't been stuck with this lame project.<br /><br />Grade: D/D-