Starring: Brendan Fraser, Sienna Guillory, Eliza Bennett, Paul Bettany, Helen Mirren, Andy Serkis, Jim Broadbent

Directed by: Iain Softley

New Line Cinema

The Official Site of Inkheart

Discuss Inkheart on the boards!

In this second renaissance of Brendan Fraser (Journey to the Center of the Earth and The Mummy 3 are flawed but fun and at the very least - profitable) I went into his latest with an open sense of excitement and a willingness to add it to the list of successes. It didn’t hurt of course that Inkheart, a children’s fantasy adventure featuring father and daughter fighting the forces of evil with the power of the spoken word, has a broad appeal to the child in all of us and anyone that enjoys cracking open a good book form time to time. Ultimately though, I found myself a little disappointed that a movie that celebrates the written word as much as Inkheart does stumbled so thoroughly when it came to telling its own adventure.

Mo and Meggie (Father and Daughter/Fraser and newcomer Eliza Bennett) have spent the past 10 years looking for a copy of Inkheart the mysterious novel that, when Mo last read it to his family, changed their lives forever. Mo is revealed to be a “silvertongue�, a person with the exceptional ability to bring the characters of a book to life when he reads their adventures aloud.

The two most notable of these words-come-to-life in the film are the villain and the vagabond. Andy Serkis is fiendishly fantastic as Capricorn, a wicked underling in the pages of Inkheart that has made the most of his time outside the book. I thought it was an interesting twist to show a man from a fantasy setting adapting to the real world, dressing in the appropriate attire and finding ways to succeed. A well-written character can be a difficult thing to escape though, as is evident by the giant castle this “modern man� chooses to live in.

Paul Bettany who’s made a career of playing ghosts and dedicated albino madmen adds another unique character to the mix with Dustfinger, a fire juggling street performer. He’s been trapped in the real world and desires desperately to return to the comfortable life and family waiting for him within the pages of the book. He’d be an easy-to-love anti-hero if he weren’t constantly letting his own needs lead him down the wrong path. The best characters are often a little flawed though aren’t they? Plus, without his willingness to involve the wrong people this movie would be like 15 minutes long.

Where these characters, and the film for that matter, really come to life is when they finally meet their creator. In a desperate attempt to find a copy of the novel so they can read away their troubles, Mo and Meggie go to the source and track down the book’s author. I loved watching Jim Broadbent bumble through the awe and astonishment that comes with meeting the realization of something he’d created.

In that alone you can see that the ideas to make Inkheart an exciting and original experience are there, they just have trouble making good use of it. They barely take advantage of the great concepts they’ve established. A sluggish pacing moves Mo and Meggie in and out of scenarios in the least interesting of ways. At one point Fraser’s character reads aloud from the Wizard of Oz summoning a tornado to act as a distraction during their escape and in that we see the potential for where this story could go. Sadly the cautious dad rarely cracks open a book for fear of recreating the same disastrous results of that mysterious first reading (which I’m dancing around as not to spoil anything for you). Perhaps they didn’t want to step on the toes of the film’s grand finale, which has a lot of fun with the power of a silvertongue. Giant smog beast, Toto (the dog not the band) to the rescue, Helen Mirren on a unicorn. ‘Nuff said.

Inkheart has a strong message of family and a warm invitation for kids to open a book every once and a while instead of turning on the TV by default. That alone is a good enough reason to drag along the little ones and hopefully get them excited about the adventures that can be found within the pages of a good novel. I’m just not convinced that the adventure telling you to read is even half as interesting as what awaits you in those pages.

Rating: 5 out of 10 - It has been a huge thrill for me over the past couple weeks to have the company of my wife when going to the movies. For some reason she was up for Bride Wars, My Bloody Valentine 3-D and Inkheart, three movies she never would have bothered with a few months ago. It’s truly been an amazing time.

It’s nice to see her get excited about movies that I never thought she would. For instance – ¬she really enjoyed Inkheart. When leaving, I apologizing for having her watch what I found to be a slowly paced, good intentioned but somewhat boring kid’s story. She loved it though which had me simultaneously admiring her willingness to suspend belief for a couple hours and questioning the presence of my own inner child. It just goes to show you how singular my voice is and how anyone, even the person closest to me, can have a very different opinion.

I hope that you guys are taking my reviews with a grain of salt. I try to give everything a fair shake but it’s important to remember that my thoughts are mine and that yours are most likely going to be very different. That’s the great thing about movies, books or any art really – It’s subjective to the point where even the worst thing is brilliant to someone. Everything except The Wicker Man.

From time to time I find myself circling movies like this in the store. Movies like The Golden Compass or Spiderwick Chronicles, when they reach a certain price range, become oddly appealing to me. The child in me enjoys the fantastic adventures and sweet natured good fun. The circling usually leads nowhere though and I don’t suspect I’ll make enough paces around the Inkheart display to convince myself that it needs to be in my collection.

I’m a fan of Fraser but he’s certainly had a career filled with ups and downs. While his resume has always been a wonderful balance of accessible blockbusters and quieter serious films that really show him in a whole different way, it’s hard to think about his career without horrible memories of George of the Jungle, Dudley Do-Right or Looney Tunes: Back in Action coming to mind.

Of all his work I find myself draw to his earliest work. Despite what the comic says, Encino Man is a rock solid film, it just took the hit here because it’s easily recognizable but the truth is that it’s a lot of fun and Fraser is really good in it. The other big stand out for me will always be Airheads, a little movie about a band that hijacks a radio station so they can get their music on the air. Great music, great cast (which includes Sandler, Farley and Buscemi) and another great performance from Fraser. He’s got what it takes to do comedy, action and drama and it’s nice to see him accentuate that and dodge the fluff in recent years.

Artistically this one didn’t go where I wanted it to. I don’t think I nailed the caricature of Fraser as well as I wanted to. It’s passable and it suits the joke fine but I never really found the comfort zone for him, something I’ve been striving to do for the past few months. I am significantly more comfortable with Jennifer Connelly and would gladly keep making jokes about The Day the Earth Stood Still for the chance to draw her giant eyebrows.

I got confirmation this week that the JLCM books will be arriving in at the beginning of this week. Right now I’m still stressing out about getting everything completed for New York Comic Con in a couple weeks but I’d really like to get the book up online and for sale for everyone that doesn’t live near the Big Apple. After all, Digital Pimp is huge in Canada. HUGE. Not really but a decent size that’s for sure.

Priority one fells like getting all the busy work done but it’s important to me to make the book available. Swing on by during the week and I should have more info. Thanks for reading. More soon.