Also, if my audience was any indication, MirrorMask is not really a children's movie; the kids I watched it with seemed antsy and disinterested. In contrast, my adult brother and I couldn't take our eyes away from the truly imaginative artwork!
Every single character is grating and unlikable. So way to go with realism, Duplass Brothers! This is decent mumblecore (my favorite scene was the drunken midnight wedding), but for the real stuff skip to Andrew Bujalski.
This movie is so great! It's exactly what it's supposed to be, but done more intelligently than one might expect. The cast is perfect. Martin Starr needs to be in everything, and I'm now hopelessly in love with the very cool Kristen Stewart, who I never expected to like. Jesse Eisenberg is splendid, but I couldn't help seeing Michael Cera written all over his role. One of the most thoroughly enjoyable films I've seen this year.
I understand why people want to watch the film adaption of, say, War and Peace rather than spending months struggling through the book. But when it's a graphic novel and it takes longer to watch the movie than read the source material, why not enjoy the original?