Young barber Rufus (Robin Edwards) comes to the Mirrored Kingdom to ply his trade, only to discover that the entire population has sworn off shaving or even trimming their beards, all in solidarity with King Cuthbert (Peter Egan), who was cursed decades ago with a miles-long, uncuttable magical beard. Tangled throughout the island-citystate, the gigantic magical beard keeps the King physically confined to his throne, but is considered an omen of good luck by the people.
Little do they know the secret truth: that the King was cursed by his own twin brother Jasper (Colin McFarlane), using a Magic Wand stolen from a fairy. The fairy died as a result, because fairies cannot survive without their wand, and her husband Wizzy (Jim Broadbent) and daughter Sophie (Maria Darling) have been trying to find a way to break the spell, unsuccessfully — while Jasper, still alive in a secret lair beneath the Kingdom, has been trying to wring enough power from the wand to take over the Kingdom. Just as Rufus arrives in the Mirrored Kingdom, Jasper's chief mook Batface (Kerry Shale) steals Sophie's fresh new wand to replace her mother's failing one, and Rufus takes the blame.
Also given significant screentime, and slowly increasing in plot relevance over the course of the film, are the talking mice of the Mirrored Kingdom, mainly represented by Ronnie (Allan Corduner) and Maddie (Maureen Lipman), a bickering married couple of fieldmice who have decided to move to the Kingdom to live closer to Maddie's mother.
This film provides examples of:
- Amulet of Dependency: Fairies cannot survive long without their wands. Sophie's mother withered away due to Jasper sealing hers, and the same begins to happen to Sophie after Jasper steals hers. The effects worsen once Jasper starts directly draining Sophie's wand for power, even resulting in Sophie losing her Pointy Ears (though it's made clear that she can't survive long in this form, and isn't just being turned into a healthy human).
- Beard of Evil: Zig-Zagged Trope. In the flashback, out of the two twin brothers, Jasper, the evil one, is originally clean-shaven, while Cuthbert, the good one, sports a black goatee and mustache which, combined with his red wardrobe, makes him look rather like a Classic Villain. However, as the title implies, Cuthbert's beard is soon cursed by Jasper to grow to an incredible length, becoming a wizardly-looking long white beard in the process and lessening the evil look. Moreover, in the climax, the magic beard is shrunken down to a white goatee which Jasper transfers to himself, so that by the extreme end of the story, evil Jasper is the one with a villainous-looking pointed goatee (sans mustache) while good Cuthbert now bears a smooth chin.
- Been There, Shaped History: In the only hint in the film that the story takes place on Earth in the indeterminate past (as opposed to a generic fantasy realm), Wizzy shows off a "rabbit-in-a-hat spell" that he's developed and optimistically quips that it's "bound to catch on".
- Card-Carrying Villain: Jasper has a Ayn Rand-esque philosophy according to which "the Selfish One is the Clever One", as he exposits in his Villain Song, and cheerfully describes himself as a "psychopath".
- Comically Missing the Point: When Wizzy points out Jasper's transformation into a demonic creature in an effort to plead with him to surrender the stolen wand, Jasper pretends to believe that Wizzy is instead talking about the fact that he used the wand to grow a goatee.
- Evil Is Hammy: As only Colin McFarlane can deliver, Jasper sounds every bit the theatrical, spoiled, emotionally volatile aristocratic man-child he is deep down.
- Evil Makes You Ugly: Using a stolen fairy's wand as a human causes Jasper to gradually devolve into a demonic-looking, degenerated form with sickly green skin, pink eyes and batlike wings. In two different scenes, someone else is horrified at his gruesome transformation, but Jasper doesn't seem to care.Wizzy: "Jasper — the power of the wand — look what it's done to you!"Jasper: "What?… Oh, the beard! Yes, it's added a couple of years…"[later]Cuthbert: "Jasper! Look at you! What has become of you?"Jasper: "Something to do with ‘wielding a wand born not for me’… but hey. It beats using the stairs."
- Evil Twin: Jasper and Cuthbert are identical twins (though with different voice actors), with Jasper being a lifelong bully to Cuthbert, culminating in cursing him and then plotting to steal his crown.
- Humanity Ensues: Sophie loses her wings and Pointy Ears once Jasper starts draining the power of her wand, though it's only a temporary stage as part of her withering away, and there's no possibility of her just living as a magicless human.
- Mouse World: There is a society of talking mice living within the Beard, typically using items cast off by humanity for other purposes.
- Musical World Hypotheses: A variant of the Alternate Universe hypothesis: spontaneous song numbers are normal in the Mirrored Kingdom, but nowhere else, and outsiders to the Kingdom consider it to be ridiculous, eccentric behaviour at first. Ronnie spontaneously starts singing as a sign that he's embraced living in the Mirrored Kingdom.Maddie: "Aw, Ronnie — you made up a song!"Ronnie: "Hey, we live in the Mirrored Kingdom! That's what we do here!"
- Our Fairies Are Different: Fairies are a Mage Species of humanoids with pointy ears and small dragonfly wings, who seemingly live openly among humans, being seen as unusual, but not that remarkable. As his name implies, Sophie's father Wizzy is a Wizard Classic, but he's still considered a fairy. As an additional wrinkle, a fairy's wand is an Amulet of Dependency for them, and they die if separated from it for too long — even though it is very much possible for an unscrupulous human to steal a fairy's wand and use it for themselves.
- Pointy Ears: Fairies naturally have them (and Sophie briefly loses hers, which become rounded and human-like, when Jasper drains her wand). After the power of the wand starts corrupting Jasper, his ears mutate into even more distinctly inhuman ones that look more like a dragon's frills.Jasper: "I have the wand… I have the power… Woo-hoo! I even have the ears!"
- Tom the Dark Lord: Or Jasper the Dark Lord as the case may be. Still, could be worse, his brother Cuthbert could have been the evil one…
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Jasper initially does not react to Rufus abruptly swinging into his evil lair on a strand of the Beard, snatching the MacGuffin out of his hands, and swinging out the window again.Rufus: [swings in; snatches wand] "Hi."Jasper: "Hi."[swings out again]Jasper: "………wHUH?!"
- Villain Song: Jasper gets an extended song number expositing on his worldview as part of his bid to convince Rufus to join him.
- Wizard Classic: Wizzy dresses in blue, has the Wizard Beard, and the kindly grandfatherly attitude. However, he's technically a fairy, and has a poofy chef's hat in recognition of his lifelong dream of becoming a pastry chef instead of a magic-shop owner.
