Cinebuffs Recommends
I think a good number of reviews have automatically and subconsciously added at least an extra star just for the fact that Disney's latest effort with this story was so completely and utterly risible. Relief then, it would seem, can make up for any shortfalls.
Not that this has many really. Either you're pre-disposed to the animation style here or you're not. Unlike many, I'm not transported to a magical world of delight and wonder just because someone got their head round stop-motion. Del Toro is not just someone, of course, and this is indeed wonderful, just maybe not actual perfection as some have called it.
Whilst the images are ebullient, glorious and rapturous, Del Toro's version still ambles in places where it should skip from time to time, so labelling it as perfect is a fools' errand in waiting, when something better comes along, which invariably it will.
Don't get me wrong, this is no ghost at the feast response as I was often mesmerised, just not completely. It entertains in spades and regularly made me crack as many helpless grins as Disney provided grimaces with their most recent version, which can rightly and justly be thrown in the bin labelled, 'really couldn't be arsed doing this properly'.
Recommended for those that love this type of thing as Del Toro is one of the best at it and really, it almost seems cruel on Disney, like showing a homeless man around your new palatial mansion before kicking him back into the street.