Actually I caught this movie on TV as I was about to go to bed, and<br /><br />it grabbed me immediately. Sure, it's parody and genre, but it's<br /><br />other things too. It is visually eye-grabbing for a start. The odd<br /><br />candy colors are partly reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz and The<br /><br />King and I, but the total effect is disorientating, colder, more high<br /><br />pitched: its clashing colors dominated by the piercing fuschia red,<br /><br />but sometimes slanting off towards yellows, or sepias and soft<br /><br />blues. In European terms it's like seeing the paintings of<br /><br />Pontormo and Bronzino - a Mannerist palette on film. There is, I<br /><br />imagine a lot of filtering and digital enhancement here. It's<br /><br />self-conscious but no more so than any consistent vision has to<br /><br />be. So the color comes first.<br /><br />Immediately, you are pitched in an alternative reality of westerns<br /><br />(Sergio Leone mixed with Zorro) and romances, but comic as the<br /><br />'western' scenes are, these are not merely 'cool' parodies. The<br /><br />style everywhere refers to memory, of period, of genre: if it is irony it <br /><br />is a strange poignant irony in the service of poetry. The palette<br /><br />changes with the genre, as does the framing. Parts of it are<br /><br />presented as scenes in theaters.<br /><br />The story is simple enough but acute in its balance of belief and<br /><br />distance. It makes sense as an adult take on the feel of childhood.<br /><br />I thought it marvelously original, funny and alarming. Oh far far far<br /><br />better than the vastly cerebral Greenaway whose work might make<br /><br />a reasonable aesthetic analogy.