(PG 101mins) Stephanie Leonidas, Gina McKee, Rob Brydon, Jason Barry, Stephen Fry and Robert Llewellyn. Directed by Dave McKean.

When Eighties soap opera Dallas decided to reintroduce long-dead character Bobby Ewing via the medium of "oh, it was all a dream", everyone agreed the show had jumped the shark (a term meaning something which once was good, has now gone just plain silly).

While dream sequences are usually very dumb (remember Bouncer's trippy dog-mare in Neighbours?), goth gods Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman have created a fantastical world which actually rings true.

Taking inspiration and more than a dollop of plot lines from the likes of Labyrinth, Howl's Moving Castle, The Hobbit and Lord Of The Rings, Mirrormask concerns Helena (Leonidas), the 15-year-old girl daughter of circus entertainers.

When her mother (McKee) unexpectedly falls ill, Helena moves in with her grandmother (Dora Bryan) and father (Brydon) in a small flat in Brighton's Embassy Court. Using her drawings as a way of escaping, Stephanie somehow finds herself awake in a decidedly odd world where cat-like gryphons roam the streets, baby-like giants float above the city and library books are a useful form of transportation.

Setting off on a quest to stop this strange place from falling into the hands of an evil dark queen (McKee again) and restore the power of the light queen (yes, McKee once more), Helena must brave all manner of oddities and find the meaning of the titular shiny trinket.

Episodic, deranged, disjointed and difficult to follow it may be, but Mirrormask is still quite simply one of the best British films to come along in ages.

Taking the dream-like state to the nth degree, it races from one visually-stunning scene to the next with an inventiveness long thought missing in our homegrown industry.

From an unnerving rendition of The Carpenter's Close To You to a chase sequence featuring monkey-like birds with removable beaks, Mirrormask is never less than breathtaking.

Seek it out and wish your dreams were half as good.