I gave Tideland a try in the belief it could only be better than Gilliam's rock bottom 'The Brothers Grimm'. I heard it was a real personal project for him, without big studio interference, so it looked promising. Boy, was I disappointed. I can't imagine what led him to the literary source in the first place. What did he see in this counterfeited story, so full of expired clichés like the front page of DeviantArt? "Little girl lost in a world of creeps survives through the power of her innocence - and lipstick." Derivative doesn't even begin to describe this rough mess of Dickens, Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, Psycho, Coraline and some really stinky emo-Gothic junk. Even so, it could have turned out decent, as it often does when poor material lands in the hands of a good director. But instead of trying to refine the material, Gilliam opted to over-thicken the stereotyped Gothic to the detriment of minimum plausibility. Well, how lifelike is to you a little girl cuddling up to her junkie father's disemboweled corpse without any sign of nervous breakdown? Count in a few other characters, similarly unbelievable, and you have B.U.L.L.S.H.I.T. spelled out big and bold for you. And of course, the constant bombast of the wide-angle optics won't help you suspend your towering disbelief. Maybe a bit of suggestion, instead of the dumb show-it-all, would have helped. Maybe something that resembles a real-life perverted childhood. I love Gilliam, but this is just awful. Rewatch 'To Kill a Mockingbird' instead.
