Tim Burton’s been on a hit-or-miss streak for a while now, but when he was on, he was on – in one unbroken run, he gave us Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, and Batman Returns. That’s enough awesomeness for the entire careers of many directors – Burton accomplished that with his first five real films.

Capping off that winning streak, though, is Burton’s genuine masterpiece, an outstanding piece of cinema that is now often forgotten about when talking about Tim Burton, Director.  That film is Ed Wood, the lovingly crafted, brilliantly successful biopic of one of Hollywood’s most infamous personalities:  Edward D. Wood, Jr., the “Worst Director of All-Time.”

Now, fellow fans of “Mystery Science Theater 3000″ know that Ed Wood’s pictures are far from being the worst movies ever made – as bad as a Plan 9 From Outer Space or Bride of the Monster can be, they are nowhere near as poorly made or soul-crushingly torturous as films like Manos:  Hands of Fate, Monster-a-Go-Go, or Red Zone Cuba. Fortunately, Ed Wood doesn’t really play into the “worst of all time” mantra that much, instead depicting Wood as a relentlessly optimistic, wide-eyed dreamer with aspirations of being the next Orson Welles, using his talents to their absolute fullest – never realizing that his talents are pretty puny.  The film takes Wood’s side and crafts him as a likable, charming go-getter that one can’t help but sympathize with, which makes the inevitable ups and downs of being a Z-grade Hollywood director all the more affecting.

The film follows Wood from his early days transforming a sex-change exploitation flick into a personal, emotional (but still unsuccessful) look into cross-dressing (1953’s Glen or Glenda), to his meeting washed-up drug-addicted horror icon Bela Lugosi, to getting 1955’s Bride of the Monster made amidst funding troubles, ending on the iconic note of Wood’s career:  the filming and release of the legendary Plan 9 from Outer Space in 1959.  

It’s fairly exhausting to list everything this film gets right, but #1 has to be the cast.  Everybody is spot on, and it starts with Johnny Depp as Wood himself.  Depp plays Wood as an ambitious artisan who’s working from a rather limited palette – he might not have much of a talent for filmmaking (a fact he’s oblivious to), but he’s going to make every movie as big and far-reaching and amazing as his (lack of) ability and budget will allow.

Overflowing with optimistic smiles and good-natured charm, Depp’s Wood is one of the actor’s finest performances.  He transforms Ed Wood into the sort of larger-than-life mythic figure we all hoped he really was (not necessarily 100% accurate to reality), and is a complete joy to watch.

The other cornerstone of the film is an equally fantastic peformance:  that of Martin Landau as the aged, out-of-work icon of horror, Bela Lugosi.  Landau absolutely nails Lugosi, from the accent to the mannerisms, and skillfully navigates a complex, challenging role.  He handles radical shifts in personality, from Lugosi’s world-weary lows to his drug-enhanced highs, and winds up being an incredibly sympathetic and tragic figure.  He’s funny, he’s dramatic, and he’s perhaps the finest performance in the film.

The interplay between Depp and Landau is just fantastic – as Wood and Lugosi evolve into their friendship, one of the strangest and least-likely in Hollywood’s history, Depp and Landau sell every moment.  As the film unfolds, it becomes clear that Wood’s entire world is made up of the weirdos and outcasts of Mid-Century Hollywood’s low-level fringes, and Lugosi quickly becomes, essentially, one of the gang.

Speaking of which, the supporting players are all equally fun to watch.

Ed’s girl at the outset of the story is Dolores Fuller, who Ed casts as the female lead in his films.  Dolores is played by Sarah Jessica Parker, a long time before she was “Sarah Jessica Parker from Sex and the City.”  Dolores has the task of being the one relatively normal person in Ed’s sphere of society’s rejects, a position that becomes increasingly frustrating as Ed’s films become ever-more complex and convoluted.  SJP does a great job here, and her slowly building exasperation and intolerance for Ed’s way of life is entirely believable.

Jeffrey Jones shows up as Criswell, the famously inaccurate “psychic” whose bizarre predictions are the stuff of legend, and who became a fixture in Ed’s movies, narrating Plan 9 and using phrases like “future events such as these will affect you in the future.”  Jones capture’s Criswell’s bravado and quirkiness perfectly, and even gets the famous spit-curl right.

Lisa Marie capably fills out the corset of Vampira, who gets drawn into Ed’s world almost against her will, and who appeared in Plan 9 with a mute character so nobody could recognize her voice.  The sense of sheer embarrassment Vampira must have felt when she signed on for Plan 9 is palpable, and Marie does a fine job portraying the original Queen of Darkness.

Patricia Arquette plays Kathy O’Hara, Ed’s eventual wife.  Sweet and caring, Kathy plays an important role in the film, as the first woman who really accepts Ed and his life for what they are, never judging him and never backing down in her commitment to him and his work.  Arquette is incredibly effective, quietly conveying all that Kathy means to Ed in a lovely, subtle performance.

Another eerie doppleganger is George “The Animal” Steele, playing Swedish wrestler-turned-Ed Wood leading man Tor Johnson.  Steele’s resemblance to Johnson is uncanny, and he brings a lot of charm and humor to the role of one of moviedom’s oddest actors.

Very nearly stealing every scene he’s in is Bill Murray as Ed’s flamboyant drag queen-turned-actor friend Bunny Breckinridge.  Murray is hilarious, but wisely plays Breckinridge subtly, never taking him into caricature territory.  One of Murray’s best roles, though not a well-known one unfortunately.

One of my favorite things about Ed Wood is how wonderfully it depicts this strange world of bottom-level fringe mid-1950s Hollywood.  The movie’s sense of style and place is impeccable, from the fashions to the cars to the mannerisms and speech of the characters.  It all has a very slightly off-kilter feel, thanks to Burton’s direction and sense of style.  However, it never approaches the sort of preconception we have of Burton’s films today – it doesn’t look like a “Tim Burton movie,” yet there is an unmistakable air of Burton surreality to the proceedings from time to time.

Because of this subtlety (among many other reasons), this is my favorite Tim Burton movie.  Long before he was a Hot Topic stereotype, Burton made a name for himself for his bizarre, imaginative visuals, but Ed Wood showed Burton playing a very different game, creating a depiction of mid-’50s Hollywood that is true to the era but has a slightly weird feel about it, befitting the oddball characters populating Ed’s world.

Filmed in smooth black & white, Ed Wood is also, simply, a lovely movie to look at.

The film also has many scenes that are treats for fans of B-movies and Ed’s films in particular, creating an on-the-set feel that really captures the sort of charm that a great B-movie can create, and the sort of love that fans of lesser-quality cinema feel for their subject matter.

Ed Wood is, simply, a great movie.  An engaging story, beautifully acted, wonderfully filmed, and accompanied by a pitch-perfect score by Howard Shore that echoes the tropes of classic B-movies.  It’s virtually impossible to watch this movie and not come away moved by the story of Ed Wood and his strange world of incompetent films and offbeat people, especially if you enjoy watching a good bad movie.  It’s a film that gets in behind the scenes and explores some of the most colorful people behind some of the most famous bad movies ever made, and it does it all with genuine heart and affection for the people and films it examines.  It truly is Tim Burton’s masterpiece, and a fitting memorial to the legacy of one of Hollywood’s most fascinating people.

I’m a Wonder Woman fan. I don’t read a lot of comics, and to be honest I haven’t even read any measurable amount of current Wonder Woman material, but as a character I’m definitely a fan of the Amazon princess. I own the original William Moulton Marston Golden Age Wonder Woman run in hardcover and Darwyn Cooke’s “DC: The New Frontier” has a place of honor on my coffee table. (I have a problem with the way Diana is drawn most of the time these days, but Darwyn Cooke’s version of her is my absolute favorite.)

I’ve always considered her to be one of comicdom’s most interesting characters – a woman raised in a feminine utopia by a mother who freed her people from enslavement at the hand of man, who now must serve as an emissary and champion of both her people and that very same world of man. A woman trying to empower the women in Man’s World to stand up for themselves and realize that they are special and amazing in their own ways (some say Diana’s not really relatable because she comes from an all-woman utopia – I disagree. She might not have ever been passed over for a promotion because of her gender, but when you come from a people who were enslaved by gods because of their gender I figure you’ve at least got a pretty solid foundation on which to base your arguments). A woman who is massively powerful, rivaling and perhaps surpassing Superman himself in many ways, and perhaps even more intimidating than Supes because of her femininity (one of my favorite moments in “The New Frontier” is the brief scene between Diana and Superman in Asia, as he confronts her for aiding a group of women held captive and forced into sexual servitude by guerilla fighters. Diana disarmed the guerillas, freed the women, and let them take the guerillas’ guns and slaughter them. Diana, drawn by Cooke as basically a seven-foot-tall, endlessly curvaceous ’40s pinup model, stares Supes down and gets in his face, standing a good several inches taller than the Man of Steel. She berates him for slamming her actions while the government conducts secret operations in the region before snarling “There’s the door, spaceman” and sending Supes on his way. It really gets the point across that even Superman is somewhat uneasy about being on Diana’s bad side). A woman who is equally capable of bringing about peace through massive strength or pure love. A woman whose sense of rightness might not quite mesh with the “American Way” every time.

Like Superman, she will always be an outsider who doesn’t quite fit in with normal people – but in some ways, she’s even more of an outsider than Supes. Sure, he’s massively powerful, intimidating, and on some levels godlike, but he’s an alien. At some point, people expect that aliens are going to be different. Diana’s much more subtle – she’s also massively powerful, intimidating, and on some levels godlike, but she doesn’t have the whole alien thing to explain it. When you get right down to it, she’s just an incredibly exceptional woman from a race of exceptional women. To a lot of people, that’s going to be weirder and more intimidating than an alien. She’s not powered by a yellow sun or born of a species of space beings – she is a product of Earth, a force of nature.  

She’s indisputably one of the biggest characters in comics history, yet she’s never quite had the respect that a Batman or Superman has gotten. While every character appears to have had monumental stupidity foisted upon them over the history of their comics career, Diana’s had things done to her that go against her very purpose. She’s been turned into a ’60s spy, characterized as a spiteful and unlikeable man-hater that needs to be beaten to behave (thanks, Frank Miller), had her femininity stripped away by artists intent on turning her into a muscle-y, sinewy, ripped bodybuilder, been turned into a secretary on “Super Friends,” and more. While Batman and Superman get movie after movie, Diana has to live solely through her comics, her part on Justice League cartoons, and DVDs of the old ’70s TV show.

That show is sometimes the only exposure a lot of people who aren’t comics people have to Wonder Woman. I know it gets some flak for being at least partially cheese-based, but considering that it was the ’70s (the low point of modern culture), I’ve always thought the show wasn’t bad at all. Particularly in the first season, which was pure Golden Age Wonder Woman, battling Nazis during World War II. They stayed as close to the source material as they could with a ’70s TV budget and they scored a massive win by casting Lynda Carter as Diana, one of the most ideal pairings of actress and role that could be imagined. Carter was tall, curvy, and could display Diana’s compassionate and peaceful nature while still kicking Nazi arse when the need arose. As a way to bring the original Marston character to life, she was ideal. While the show itself definitely had its elements of ’70s schlock (Lyle Waggoner as Steve Trevor never really worked all that well), Carter elevated things with her portrayal of Diana.

A new live-action Wonder Woman movie floats in Development Hell for the time being, and I’m skeptical it’ll get produced any time soon. Outside of cash-cow Batman, DC’s live action film adaptations aren’t especially prolific these days. Perhaps the best person to make a new live-action Wonder Woman film that wouldn’t suck, geek idol/feminist action hero maestro Joss Whedon, has already left the production. Without Whedon, hopes that a Wonder Woman movie featuring some intelligence and an appropriate actress playing the part aren’t as high. Whedon seemed to get what makes Diana special, and he had better rumored taste in actresses for the part. With Whedon writing & directing somebody like Morena Baccarin of “Firefly” or Eliza Dushku of “Buffy” and “Dollhouse,” we might have gotten a true Wonder Woman movie. Instead, the studio will probably want to cast some anorexic flavor-of-the-moment “hottie” who can’t act her way out of a paper bag, like Megan Fox, or some vacant-headed supermodel. Blergh, as Liz Lemon would say.

In the meantime, though, a certain legendary animation guru named Bruce Timm decided that, if Warner Brothers didn’t want to make a live action Wonder Woman movie, he’d just make an animated one. Which brings us back to Timm’s “Wonder Woman,” the subject of this review if you’ve forgotten.

Timm needs no introduction. His creation of the legendary “Batman: The Animated Series” in the ’90s was enough to cement his reputation as a master of the art. BTAS is still considered by many, even in this post-”Dark Knight” world, to be the best depiction of Batman ever put on the screen, and its “Dark Deco” art style, mature writing, and incredible characters (from Kevin Conroy’s Bruce Wayne/Batman to Mark Hammill’s (!) Joker to Arleen Sorkin’s lovably insane Harley Quinn, and more) forever changed the world of animation. Timm became the guiding hand of the DC Animated Universe and went on to handle projects such as “Superman: The Animated Series,” “The New Batman Adventures,” “Batman Beyond,” the “Justice League” series, the recent direct-to-DVD features “Superman: Doomsday” and “Batman: Gotham Knight,” and the direct-to-DVD adaptation of Darwyn Cooke’s “DC: The New Frontier,” re-titled as “Justice League: The New Frontier.”

With Timm handling production duties on “Wonder Woman,” storyboard artist and fledgling director Lauren Montgomery helms the picture, with a script written by “Birds of Prey”/”Wonder Woman” writer Gail Simone and Michael Jelenic. The film serves as a complete re-telling of Diana’s story for the DC Animated Universe and as such can be viewed by newcomers to the character.

At the beginning, we’re treated to a lavishly animated prologue set in ancient Greek times as Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons (a great portrayal by Virginia Madsen), and her forces battle Ares, the God of War (Alfred Molina turning in a suitably evil performance), and his armies. This is quite literally a battle of the sexes, not just in the sense of the all-female Amazon army going against Ares’ male-and-creature brigades, but in motivation as well: we quickly learn that Hippolyta and Ares were lovers once, but he enslaved the Amazons and forced Hippolyta to bear his child (who is now on the battlefield slaughtering the Amazons). Hippolyta revolted and commenced a massive war against Ares for the freedom of her people, bringing us to this point.

This opening sequence gives us crucial backstory and character introductions (besides Hippolyta and Ares, we meet the Amazons Artemis, Persephone, and Alexa (each well-acted by Rosario Dawson, Vicki Lewis, and Tara Strong, respectively), who we’ll see more of later on), and serves as an introduction to the outstanding animation. Timm’s productions have always had high marks in the animation department, but “Wonder Woman” may be his most purely gorgeous work yet. Even compared to the other recent DC Animated Universe direct-to-DVD movies, “Wonder Woman” looks simply beautiful. The sheer amount of effort and care that went into the animation is obvious. This film looks better than a lot of theatrically-released animation. It’s fluid, it’s lush, it’s colorful – this is pure Timm visual poetry.

One of the things I love about “Timmverse” work is that it’s so recognizable and unique – as anime is instantly recognizable, so is a Timm product. Inspired as it is by classic ’50s comic art and Art Deco architecture & art, Timm’s style is perhaps the most thoughtfully and distinctly American animation style in existence.

This introduction also gives an exposure to the fairly brutal and violent nature of the film. This is definitely not a movie for the sensitive-to-violence types. Slashing swords, stab wounds, bone-crunching punches and kicks, and beheadings abound. Since all we’ve had previously was the fairly tame ’70s TV-era action of the old TV show, this level of action is a welcome change for Wonder Woman fans who have longed to see the true strength and power of the Amazons realized on screen.

Before Hippolyta can finish Ares off, Zeus and Hera (David McCallum and Marg Helgenberger) intervene. Ares is bound by metal bracelets that prevent him from drawing on the psychological power of hate and violence that gives him his strength, and is turned over to the Amazons to be detained indefinitely. Hera grants the Amazons an isolated, hidden island in the middle of the Aegean Sea to use as their new home and to serve as the location of their self-made utopia free from the influences of Man’s World.

We see a quick time-lapse of the creation of the new Amazon home of Themyscira, and as Hera’s voiceover tells Hippolyta that she eventually be granted her wish for a child not born of unnatural union, we see Hippolyta kneel down on the beach of Themyscira during a storm and sculpt a baby from the Earth itself. She holds the baby sculpture aloft and the lightning of Zeus strikes down. Revealed is a healthy baby girl – the infant Diana.

We then cut to the present day, and a now-grown Diana (played by Keri Russell of “Felicity” fame – the choice I was most skeptical of, but Russell does a surprisingly excellent job as the voice of the young, inexperienced Diana). Diana is already showing that she is another notch above the rest of the Amazons in skill as she handily defeats expert warrior Artemis yet again during a sparring match.

The Amazons have been sealed off from the outside world ever since the creation of their island, and there is a sense of longing from the Amazons here – Diana has explored every inch of Themyscira and wants to see more, Artemis wants to taste combat again, and Alexa wants to reestablish contact with the outside so she can have more books to read. Queen Hippolyta arrives and puts a stop to the discussion, and takes Diana to a dungeon to show her the wicked true nature of Man. Held in that dungeon is Ares, still powerless, and still vowing to one day rise again and slaughter humankind.

Later, as Diana heads out for a horse ride, their world is about to be shaken up by the arrival of one Steve Trevor (Nathan Fillion).

The casting of Nathan Fillion as Trevor is one of those “couldn’t be any better” sort of things. Fillion brings his cocky swagger and sense of humor that served him so well in “Firefly” and “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” to full force in his portrayal of Trevor, and he and Russell have great chemistry together. This, Hollywood – this is how you cast people!

Trevor & two other American pilots are attacked by an unnamed force of enemy fighters and are shot down. As Trevor plummets toward the ocean, somebody on Themyscira (we only see their hand) touches the mirror which controls the island’s invisibility cloak, revealing it to Trevor in time for him to make a rough landing in a lagoon. He exits the plane and stumbles across a group of nude Amazons relaxing around a nearby waterfall, but before he can enjoy the scene too much a group of warriors led by Artemis begin pursuing him. Eventually, he runs into Diana, where he first remarks on her beauty only to have the consciousness beaten out of him by the Amazon princess.

When he awakens, he finds himself tied up and surrounded by the Amazons, and thus begins the first of many surprisingly bold sex jokes throughout the movie. The movie is definitely not shy about presenting the more sexual aspects of the Wonder Woman universe and it’s better for it. This isn’t watered-down Wonder Woman – right off the bat, Trevor cracks jokes about bondage in a hilarious nod to the many, many, many bondage references of the original Golden Age comics.

After being interrogated by Hippolyta with the Lasso of Truth, the Amazons decide that Trevor is no threat to them and that he will be returned to America. Diana wishes to take him (don’t miss Trevor’s subtle background remark of “Seconded!” at the suggestion), but Hippolyta says she is too inexperienced, and a series of challenges will be held to determine who will return him to his world. If you’re familiar with the Wonder Woman mythos at all, you know how this goes: Diana secretly competes and handily wins. Hippolyta realizes that her daughter is incredibly capable and wants this exposure to the outside world very dearly, and relents.

Before there can be too much celebration, though, it is revealed that Ares has escaped (and I won’t be spoiling anything further about that), so Diana now has two missions: return Trevor, and find Ares before he can get another god to remove the bracelets binding his power.

After donning her indestructible bracelets, the Lasso of Truth, and her new outfit (fashioned after the colors of the flag on Trevor’s flight suit as a sign of peace and friendship), Diana and Trevor load up into the Amazons’ invisible jet (which looks downright cool here compared to virtually every other iteration of the plane) and head off. Will they be able to stop Ares before he begins slaughtering humanity? Will Diana and Trevor be able to do so without her beating him senseless for his constant attempts to get her in the sack?

“Wonder Woman” is easily the best DC Animated Universe movie I’ve ever seen. Timm & company seem to finally be getting a handle on what sort of stories they can and can’t tell in the required 73 minute running time they have to work with. The adaptation of “The New Frontier” was great, but had to cram Darwyn Cooke’s epic story into that same short running time, leading to a lot of information being left out. Here, the story has plenty of room to maneuver and breathe, and we get much more in the way of character than we have before. “Wonder Woman” succeeds much more in getting us engaged and caring about its characters than the sometimes rushed feel of previous efforts.

A lot of the success comes down to Keri Russell and Nathan Fillion as our leads. They have great chemistry and have plenty of scenes to build their relationship and play off each other, with the result being that we quickly become attached to the characters. Fillion very nearly steals the show with his hilarious, womanizer-with-a-heart-of-gold portrayal of Trevor, but Russell keeps up with him. I was really unsure of having Russell play Diana, but she does a great job. There are so many great moments with these two – such as Diana teaching a little girl in Central Park how to properly swordfight with her pirate-playing boy peers before telling the girl to, and I quote, “Unleash Hell,” or Trevor unwisely engaging Diana in a tequila-drinking match that doesn’t quite end the way he’d like it to.

Additional props have to go to the other actors for giving it their all in their roles. Molina is fantastic as Ares – dark and menacing, but far from being one-note “eeeeeeeevil!” as other actors might have portrayed him. There’s even some outstanding sympathetic bits to the character, especially a scene between Ares and Hades, played with delicious sliminess by Oliver Platt. Ares shows a part of himself that isn’t fueled by hatred or terror when he’s contrasted against the Lord of the Underworld himself. It’s a nice touch in the portrayal.

The rest of the Amazons are well-played as well, from the no-nonsense Hippolyta of Virginia Madsen to the brutally efficient warrior of Rosario Dawson’s Artemis to the naive bookwork of Alexa as played by Tara Strong. One of the funniest parts of the movie is a brief exchange between Trevor and Artemis during the challenge segment on Themyscira that I don’t want to spoil.

All of this is buoyed aloft by the previously mentioned gorgeous animation. I’ve never seen any previous “Timmverse” creation that looked and moved quite this good. The movie is a total visual treat from beginning to end. Everything, from the backgrounds to the characters to the movement, is outstanding. Timm and his artists and animators have truly outdone themselves on this one.

If I was going to complain about anything related to the art or animation, it’s just a personal preference: had the film’s Diana looked like Darwyn Cooke’s version of the character as seen in “The New Frontier,” I would have been overjoyed:

I just love Cooke’s curvaceous Amazon pinup girl design over all the other interpretations of the character. To be fair, though, Timm’s movie version of the character is hardly a stick – she’s still an Amazon. And she’s not ripped, thank goodness. Just a personal preference I have for Cooke’s art, but I’m not going to let it interfere with my enjoyment of and affection for the movie.

There’s also a brief coda after the main storyline has been resolved, before the credits roll. I won’t spoil it for you, but I’ll just say that it’s a great scene and that even as the film spends its time on the mythological side of the Wonder Woman universe, they do find time in that little scene to bring in a certain member of Diana’s classic rogues gallery.

To sum up, “Wonder Woman” is an outstanding movie. It’s action-packed, has great characters and performances, gorgeous animation, some genuinely funny humor, and perhaps most importantly it’s a great depiction of Wonder Woman, the character. While not perfect – the story hops around a bit towards the end as that 73 minute running time crops up – its flaws are minor compared with everything that the filmmakers get right.

It’s great for fans and, because it’s got the complete origin story, it’s great for newcomers as well. This is the movie that Wonder Woman has deserved for a long while. It’s about time Diana gets to be in the spotlight with her own feature, and we couldn’t have asked for a better one than Timm’s adaptation. I recommend it highly – it’s greatness.

(”Wonder Woman” is available on DVD, Blu-Ray, and as a download from the iTunes store.)

“Stardust” is what you’d get if you took Rob Reiner’s 1987 cult movie “The Princess Bride,” loaded it up on CGI excess, paired the light and frothy humor with some out-of-left-field graphic violence, sprinkled it with a few dozen helicopter shots lifted from Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings,” and then tweaked it in places with a “Terry Gilliam” Photoshop filter. The result is something of a mess, very occasionally approaching something good before veering off into derivative territory.  

Bland hero Tristan inexplicably wants to win the affections of Victoria, his quasi-Victorian village’s resident alleged hottie, despite her treating him like dog food. If Tristan can retrieve a fallen star from the other side of the less-than-impressive five foot wall that divides the village from the generic magical kingdom of Stormhold, she’ll marry him instead of her fiance, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Cary Elwes. After using a Plot Device Teleportation Candle to travel to Stormhold, Tristan discovers that the fallen star has taken the form of Yvaine, played by Claire Danes with a weird blonde dye job, apparently filling the role that Gwyneth Paltrow would have played if this movie had been made several years earlier. But Tristan and his new stellar lady friend are on a collision course with wackiness, as evil witch Lamia wants to capture Yvaine and eat her heart to gain eternal youth, while scheming Stormhold princes want to retrieve Yvaine’s necklace and kill each other to ascend to the kingdom’s throne. Throw in some oddball scenes with Robert De Niro continuing the tired “tough bad ass who’s hamming it up for laughs” schtick he’s been doing since “Meet the Parents” and “Analyze This” as a cross-dressing gay air pirate with a tough facade (picture “The Princess Bride’s” Dread Pirate Roberts as a stereotypically fey hair dresser), and you’ve got a slick and shiny special effects showcase whose moments of genuine heart are adrift on a sea of l33t-k3wl CGI.

Part of the problem is the film’s wild shifts in tone. It wants to have its cake and eat it, too – a foundation of straight-up fairy tale, at times slipping into the sort of parody and satire that was “The Princess Bride’s” hallmark, before slapping us in the face with surprisingly grisly scenes of witches ripping out the intestines of small animals, or trying to pump the proceedings up into the sort of epic that Jackson’s “LoTR” was with swooping ‘copter shots of our leads wandering around the same sort of majestic landscapes of fields and mountains that appeared in the Tolkien-based films. The scheming Stormhold princes murder each other in a variety of calculating ways, but they’re played for laughs more often than not – a prince in a tub, his neck slit, gushing buckets of…blue blood. Perhaps it was the late hour of my viewing, but it all just seems rather…off. It’s almost as if the straightforward love story/”Princess Bride” homage between Tristan and Yvaine (no spoiler warning, since this part of the film’s a straight up fairy tale it’s pretty blatantly obvious that he’ll ditch the village popular girl in favor of the star), the darkly comic princes, and the scenery-chewing intestine-fondling witches are from three distinct movies. When De Niro minces his way into the film piloting a half-Zeppelin/half-pirate ship, he brings with him a heaping dose of wannabe Terry Gilliam straight out of “Time Bandits” or “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen,” but without that director’s sheer inventiveness. All these disparate elements don’t always mesh together seamlessly. The film seems to want to be all things to all fantasy fans, but it’s never focused enough to consistently deliver the goods. (A few “it’s in the script” moments don’t help, such as when a certain character develops a superpower in the film’s closing minutes, a scene which prompts rounds of “why didn’t she just do that before?”)

My other big problem with the film was its glossy sheen. Director Matthew Vaughn was obviously proud of his CGI team, calling upon them to wallop us over the head time and again when a simpler approach would have been more effective. Take the scene where the evil Lamia creates a fake inn to trap Yvaine and slice out her heart – where it would have been preferable to show a simple, more fantastical and imagination-powered depiction of the inn rising from nothing, Vaughn swoops and swirls us around an elaborate CGI construction fest before flying the camera inside, as the inn’s interiors spring to life amidst a swirl of green computerized fire. It’s the sort of modern fantasy film where everything is spelled out in CGI icing, leaving us with no need to imagine, no fantasy or wonder. Vaughn seems to hate the thought of getting the audience to use our imaginations at all. In fact, it’s when the movie jettisons its overwrought effects work that the solid fantasy film underneath can occasionally peek out from behind the curtains. As corny as it is, the romance between Tristan and Yvaine does work, and it can be genuinely affecting when it’s not being pushed aside by effects set pieces. The film’s simplest moments are its most effective – as Tristan and Yvaine gradually fall for one another, she develops a stellar glowing effect whenever she’s overcome with happiness from being with him (she’s a star, after all). These scenes of a beaming Danes softly glowing with pure joy from having found her one true love are far more affecting, and have more lasting impact, than all of Vaughn’s multimillion dollar set pieces combined.

Buried under the uneven tone and overcooked CGI is a sweet and simple fantasy that wants to get out. Perhaps others might latch on to that, but for whatever reason, I wasn’t able to get past the rest of it all to embrace it.