Movie review: Inkheart

Katherine’s been reading the book, but since she was a very good girl the past week, I took her to the movie. Here’s what I (and she) thought.

Inkheart (2007) 

Overall		Story
Production		Acting

Based on Cornelia Funke’s young reader novel (and first of trilogy), this is the tale of Mo (Brendan Fraser) and his daughter Meggie (Eliza Bennett). Mo is a “Silvertongue,” someone who bring things to life out of a book just by reading it aloud. The manifestation of that talent led, years ago, to his summoning the villain Capricorn (Andy Serkis), his henchman Basta, and the fire juggler Dustfinger (Paul Bettany) from the book Inkheart — and to the disappearance of his wife, Resa. Years later, Mo wants to get his wife back, Dustfinger wants to be returned to the book (and his own family), and Capricorn wants to get hold of Mo and use him to summon both great wealth and his terrible servant, the Shadow. Meanwhile, Meggie just wants to know what’s going on, and her great aunt (Helen Mirren) is generally flustered about everything …

While there’s some interesting meta-discussion about the nature of reality and fate, and what it might mean to be a written creation in the real world, the movie is mostly action-adventure (albeit one in which Brendan Frazier eschews much of the normal derring-do) and about the ties of family. The actors do a good job with characters that are not drawn deeply, but are not stereotypes, either. Well, the villains are suitably two-dimensional (Andy “Gollum” Serkis does Capricorn splendidly), but the other characters behave in a much more textured fashion — behaving to type, but in ways that make sense but aren’t always the sort of epic and heroic stuff you expect. Mo (Fraser) is no Rick Connell — but he also shows more human passion (and driven poor judgment in his protectiveness of Meggie) than Rick’s pulp heroism.

Overall, pretty good stuff. The movie suffers — even from someone who hasn’t read the book — from trying to fit too much into too little time. The plot feels choppy, and Katherine confirms that, of the parts she’s read in parallel, “they skipped a lot of stuff.” There’s an opening dialog that explains what’s going on — leading-by-the-nose studio-doesn’t-trust-the-audience sort of thing to my mind, though Katherine felt it explained some things that she had been confused by. The ending also feels like it was tacked in (there’s a very odd jump in there), though Katherine was pleased by the “happy ending.” This might be a movie that does better in a director’s cut.

The FX were not widespread but what ones there were (mainly fantastical creatures) were decently done. The production beyond that has some lovely countryside and marvelous buildings, giving it an unexpectedly realistic texture.

For kids in this PG film, Katherine opines that the Shadow was “pretty scary,” perhaps too much so for “kindergardiners,” but she still enjoyed it a lot, wants the DVD when it comes out, and (even more) wants to read the whole book. (And it makes me want to read it, too.)

The (rather deceptive, but still interesting) trailer: