A grotesque and dark adult fairy tale featuring nightmarish freaks preying on children of the streets!

A stunning visual feast for the eyes! Creativity and imagination are above and beyond my wildest dreams!

Jaws drop! Hearts skip a beat!

As this magnificent masterpiece reveals its fascinating and intricate attention to details that will leave you wide eyed and reveling in the rediscovery of your sense of wonder and unbridled imagination!

Naughty Approved!

Birth Year Challenge 12/22

“Who has stolen the child’s dream? The mad genius Krank in his evil scheme. To what vicious depths will he not descend? Will the tale turn to tragedy... or have a happy end?”

A beautifully unsettling fairy tale brought to life before your very eyes. Childlike in its simplicity and masterful in its subtlety. Eerily sepia and rusted landscapes filled with wildly memorable characters with names like “The Octopus” “The Cult of Cyclops” “One” and “The Diver”. A visual treat of matte paintings, marvelous set design, practical machines, early cgi, fisheye lens, all within a unique and frightening world.

The perfect dark fairytale for burgeoning young fantasy/sci-fi fans.

Avant-Garde Expressionism through a child’s eyes.

A very imaginative and dark steam-punk fantasy tale. Loses a little focus from time to time and has some dated CGI moments but a great experience overall.

Ngl wasn't really in the mood to watch this, but had to for my french class and I was not into it at all. Aesthetic and setting are interesting, but it's so weird and it never really grabbed me or did much to make me enjoy the weirdness. That DON'T make sense love
(and yes I'm talking about Ron Perlman speaking French, not just the entire plot)

40/100

*voz da pastorinha* deixa essas crianças em paz!

An imaginative and visually sumptuous dark fairy tale. But the story doesn't have enough meat on its bones and it drags.

The set and color was a lot of fun to look at, plus an interesting story.

I don't know, maybe I just don't connect with Jean-Pierre Jeunet. I don't remember much about "Amelie" or "Delicatessen," which implies I didn't connect much with them either.

Obviously, the strongest element of this film is its visual aesthetic. It has an unmistakably one-of-a-kind look - one that is playfully grotesque and nightmarish. It certainly goes for broke in the "grotesque nightmare" department - to the point that the aesthetic, while admirable, feels suffocating (valuing style over substance).

The fact that the narrative is borderline incomprehensible would be forgivable if (like in a David Lynch film) there was some sort of thematic pull or artistic through-line in the film otherwise. But alas, it's simply a bloated, overly-complex fantasy story told in an admirable visual style. And that's simply not enough to draw my genuine interest; I was checked out for the entire final 20 minutes.

My first viewing of this in probably at least 13 years, and I still love this movie. The creepy fairy tale aspect, the absurd humor, the Badalamenti score, the explicitly Gilliamesque visuals and production design. It makes me wish that Jeunet and Caro had continued to work together, although in that case it is entirely possible that we never would have gotten Amélie or A Very Long Engagement.

Upon this viewing, I noted how dated the use of some of the camera lenses, close-up techniques, and visual effects were. As of-their-time as these elements are, to me, they are part of the very fabric of this film, and it simply would not be the same without them. I was very pleased to be able to share this with my wife for the first time.

This movie looks great, and is fun but boring at times. There is something missing from this movie, I'm not sure exactly what, but this movie could be truly great if it just had that thing that I can't quite put my finger on. Hell of a review, right?

I really love the art, costumes and designs, it feels like a play. It's a gothic style, steampunk kinda like Tim Burton's style.
The story weird as fuck but entertaining.