Mirrormask tells the story of Helena, a girl who lives in the circus with her family. She's not happy with juggling all day and doing circus work, and would rather live a normal life. This causes a fight between she and her mother, though it honestly seems like less of a fight and just venting of frustration by Helena. But the "fight" is central to the story, so call it a fight for now. Right after the fight with her mother, Helena reluctantly joins the show again, and the family performs a routine. Backstage, however, Helena's mother collapses, and afterwards Helena anguishes over the fact that she can't really tell her mother how sorry she is.

After a bit more anguish and some frustrated drawing by Helena, she finds herself transported to a dream-like world. Here she meets people who dwell in a land of light. The land of light and the land of darkness have become unbalanced due to the princess of the dark leaving her world. The queen of the light world has fallen asleep, and probably due to the queen looking just like her mother, Helena takes it upon herself to set things back to normal.

The imagery is quite fantastic, though not exactly dazzling. The CG reminds me too much of test animations for old 3D software at times. Still, there are times when the entire screen looks like an impressionistic painting. Among other characters, Helena meets sphinx-like creatures with rainbow-colored wings, and runs from a black ooze that spawns evil little eyeball creatures. There's always something of interest on the screen, even if it's not mind-blowing CG. In fact, it might be a while before you realize that all Helena is wearing is a plain white shirt and pants.

Mirrormask is a very creative, artistic trip through something, though I'm still not sure what. You can see the work done to try to emulate Jim Henson's spirit, but it still comes through as an imitation. Still, the optimistic spirit of the film is a relief. Even though Helena meets all sorts of bizarre and frightening-looking creatures, she doesn't dwell on appearances. So if they did anything in the Henson style right, it's that they gave some soul to the visuals.

Because of the style of the art in this film, the Blu-ray format doesn't appear to make a world of difference in audio or visuals. But you can definitely tell there's a crispness and an added depth of color on Blu-ray. If you're already a fan of this movie in DVD format, however, chances are you'll enjoy the upgrade. Scenes like the one with the shine and dazzle of the Mirrormask itself are especially improved.

This is the kind of film you can dwell on, and try to interpret for a long time if you'd like. Personally I found the whole dream sequence a little confusing. It didn't seem like Helena needed the journey at all. After all, she was sorry for her small outburst, and it was clear that she already wanted to apologize properly. Still, if you haven't seen it, this is still a creative piece of work and a good package with plenty of behind the scenes interviews and extras. This version gives you a few more language and subtitle options but does cut out the poster and cover art gallery.