Rent Tale of Tales (2015)

Rubbish - Tale of Tales review by CP Customer

Was looking forward to this movie, but it was total rubbish, confusing over the top, could not understand what was happening most of the time, it was so bad I turned it off before I was evan half way through it.. yes rubbish :-(

Ok not great - Tale of Tales review by mb

Amazing location and costumes. Stories Ok-ish at least originals not Disney style. I had the feeling that towards the end they ran out of time and interest and just decided: “Ok let’s end it here”.

Fair(y) and Foul (mild spoilers) - Tale of Tales review by AM

'Tale of Tales' has a red, bloody heart that would keep beating even if ripped out. It bypasses the lace clad ‘fairy’ in ‘fairy tale’ and takes us for a wilderness trek through the dark forest that is the natural home of folk tales collected by the Grimm Brothers and the less well known Giambattista Basile.

Director Matteo Garrone combines several of Basile’s stories, to dance between the plight of three royal families: Vincent Cassel’s lecherous, dissolute king, Salma Hayek’s desperately broody queen and Toby Jones as a foolish, geeky monarch who neglects his daughter in favour of a pet flea. That's right, a flea. You won’t get far in this film if you don’t roll with some of the more fantastical plot devices. The characters in folk tales are refreshingly direct in taking action to get what they want. The object of Vincent Cassel’s affections for instance, a wizened old woman who beguiles the king with just her beautiful voice, forgoes spa treatments for an extreme version of exfoliation - asking the townsfolk to flay her alive.

The colour red stains this film regularly - blood is never far from the surface, but often counterbalanced with humour that acknowledges the extremes of love and death that drive these morality tales. It’s curious then, how ‘Tale of Tales’ never fully drags us into its fierce and beautiful world. Weaving together separate tales means it’s inevitably a bit episodic, but the direction doesn’t mine deep enough the moments of action and emotion, denying us satisfying landmarks in what becomes a rather meandering quest.  A director like Guillermo Del Toro who similarly has one foot in ‘art’ and popular cinema managed this feat with spectacular results in ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, but here the monsters project far less threat and because of it, give the actors less to react against.

However, let’s not cast aside ‘Tale of Tales’ like an unworthy suitor for a princess: come to its bracing mix of pastoral beauty, artful design, wit and gore like you’ve stepped into a painting. Soak up the rich passages of colour and light in between the characters that are perhaps a little too sparsely placed across the composition.