A dark fantasy majoring in weirdness, this is gross, grotesque and gruesome in turn, with moments of charm and fascination. It's far too long, though, for its content, and its intermediate stages may send you to sleep before things begin to hot up towards the end. On an oilrig in the sea, mad scientist Daniel Emilfork and his Lilliputian mother, assisted by the six clone images of his former partner, whom he consigned to the depths in a fight, kidnap children to steal their dreams and stop his own premature ageing. Pitted against them are One (Ron Perlman from TV's Beauty and the Beast), whose tiny brother is one of the stolen, and Miette (Judith Vittet), the wharfside waif who leads the kids trying to get their friends back. Then there are the evil Siamese twin sisters, the deadly automatic flea, the mad deep-sea diver and other characters, all of whose function seems chiefly to be as weird as possible. Fantasy fans may like some or all of this, others will struggle to understand the half of it.

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