Purely Joyful Movie!

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

"Mirror Mirror" is a fairly entertaining horror movie which is held back by a flimsy presence and an uninteresting "villain", if villain she be.It is about an apparently haunted mirror which gives its owner magical powers. The mirror is inherited by a young goth girl who is bullied at school. Soon her mirror allows her to get revenge on her tormentors and teachers, steaming a stuck up popular girl in the shower room at school, and giving poor Stephen Tobolowsky a heart attack. The only one who can stop the mounting body count is the only girl who was nice to the goth when she first came to school.For a movie with such a silly premise, "Mirror Mirror" actually has fairly good production values, featuring a few different locations and a few actors you might recognize: aside from Tobolowsky, there's also Karen Black and William Sanderson. However, I was just never able to swallow the premise that the mirror is evil. I've had my issues with mirrors - I've never liked the look of the guy I see when I look at one - but the one in this movie isn't even particularly scary looking. Furthermore, how is it granting the goth girl powers? Does she stand in front of it and ask it questions? We never find out. It seems that it would have been fairly straight forward to depict a being in the mirror speaking to the goth girl, but instead they just show a bunch of people dying in generic supernatural ways and leave it to us to figure out that the mirror is somehow involved.Further, the goth girl could have been a typical sympathetic villain, someone whose actions we understand even if we don't approve of them, but the movie doesn't make her likeable or interesting, and nor does it even make her tormentors worthy of contempt.The result is a horror movie which does nothing to rise above mediocrity, and has nothing to remember it by, aside a single silly idea.

"Mirror, Mirror" is at its best in the first half, with its simple but effective depiction of school life. In the second half, a few of the death scenes leave something to be desired, but others (bathtub drowning) are good. Karen Black and Yvonne De Carlo may be the draws in the cast, but it's their younger co-stars that do almost all the hard work: Rainbow Harvest makes a believable transformation from a "Winona Ryder in Bettlejuice" - wannabe to a wicked villainess, Kristin Dattilo is also convincing as one of the sweetest persons you'll ever meet, and Charlie Spradling plays the spoiled b*tch to perfection (and is downright GORGEOUS to boot). The movie does seem to go on a bit too long, but stick with it because the ending is the cleverest part. (**1/2)

Mirror. Mirror (1990) is a flat out lame movie. Why did I watch movies like this when I was younger? Who knows? Maybe I was one for punishing myself by watching one terrible movie after another. I don't know, I guess I needed a hobby during my teen years. A teenage outcast (Rainbow Harvest) seeks solace in an old mirror. Soon she learns about the horrific power this antique mirror has and uses it to strike out against those who have wronged her. Movies like these, the power giver has a nasty side effect. This one changes her inside and out if she likes it or not.A mess of a movie that for some reason was restored on d.v.d. a few years back. I don't know why. They should have left it on the shelf and collect dust. People love this movie foe some reason. If you do I would like to know why. Until then I dislike this movie and I have no reason to ever watch it again.Not recommended at all.

Owing more then its fair share to Heathers this film is about a high school outcast who uses an evil, demonic mirror to get revenge on her tormenters, but soon the mirror gets out of control and starts stalking her and her family. Dull rendering of so-so premise, features sloopy effects and wastes a good camp cast. Rated R; Nudity, Mild Sexual Situations, Graphic Violence, and Profanity.