This, right here, is how fairy tales should be portrayed on the big screen.  Fuck the kids and their sensibilities.  They need to grow up.

     In Franco-ruled Spain (Francisco, not James), a young girl named Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) moves with her pregnant mother to her abusive soldier stepfather's camp.  As she becomes accustomed to her new surroundings, she is also thrust into a fantasy world where she is a princess who has forgotten her past.

     Pan's Labyrinth excellently blurs the lines between a child's fantasy and war-torn reality.  The special effects are used properly.  The music centers around a haunting piano lullaby.  If Guillermo Del Toro never makes another movie in his life, his legacy is firmly planted with this wonderful homage to the Grimm Brothers.

 

     What Makes This Movie Cool:  Magic.  Very rarely does a movie's suspension of disbelief seem so real that it could pass for reality.  Pan's Labyrinth surpasses this so effortlessly, one begins to wonder where the reality ends, where the fantasy begins, and which is which.