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Making a movie about the magic to be found in reading
books, is a little like General Motors singing the praises
of riding a bike instead. So the biggest challenge for Iain
Softley's storybook fantasy Inkheart, is to not have the
lavish visuals drown out the wonder of words on the page.
A tall order indeed for a movie for kids, since flashy special
effects screen wizardry has just about nothing to do with
the literary inspired inner life of a child's imagination.***
Not that the actors don't work vigorously to bring
those magical powers of book love to cinematic life, as
detailed in the original insanely popular Cornelia Funke
German children's novel, which has been translated into
scores of world languages since its release in 2000. But
it's a formidable ordeal, not unlike the task at hand of
the characters they play, which is to free human beings
imprisoned in books they've been reading perhaps just a
little too enthusiastically.***
Brendan Fraser is Mortimer Folchart in Inkheart, a
devoted dad to Meggie (Eliza Hope Bennett). Mo discovers
to his dismay that he possesses the dubious gift of being
a 'Slivertongue,' with the surprise power to imprison people
in books, while simultaneously freeing characters within,
just by reading the stories aloud. And after figuring out
that he's lost his wife somewhere within the medieval realms
of a book called Inkheart that Mo had been reading to his
daughter, the distraught spouse embarks on a world journey
to find the lost book, and free his wife.***
The narrative initially weaves a gracefully enchanting
web rich in fantasy, as it winds its way along this mystical
road trip. And with a delightful comic detour when stopping
by for a spell at the home of Aunt Elinor (Helen Mirren),
an eccentric bookworm who won't stand for any foolishness
when it comes to messing around with literature. Even if
she has to face down along with a more pragmatically minded
Mo, the treacherous Capricorn (Andy Serkis), an escaped
villain from Inkheart currently gleefully terrorizing the
human race.***
Ignoring the wise premise that less can indeed be more,
the film bombards the screen with a noisy overload of characters
and subplots far too numerous to properly sort out for a
viewer of any age. This, while snippets of beloved children's
folklore and fairy tales get tossed on to the screen and
disappear just as quickly, is a dizzying swirl of lost and
found fast forward favorite fiction.***
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