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"Inkheart" is no "Bedtime Stories," which is a good or a bad thing, depending on your child's age.
Both are rated PG, but "Inkheart" deals with scarier and darker matters and leaves the audience hankering for more reasons to smile or laugh. Its sidekick animal of choice is not a dog or even a guinea pig or hamster but -- ugh -- a critter in the weasel family.
"Inkheart," based on the Cornelia Funke best-seller, is a fantasy adventure about a man named Mortimer "Mo" Folchart (Brendan Fraser) who belatedly realizes he is a "silvertongue" or someone who can speak the written word into reality.
Just reading a few lines from "Little Red Riding Hood" can make a ruby-colored cloak drift down onto a nearby laundry line. But, as we learn, Mortimer triggered a series of unforeseen events when he read "Inkheart" to his daughter, Meggie, when she was 3.
- Starring: Brendan Fraser, Paul Bettany
- Rating: PG for fantasy adventure action, some scary moments and brief language
- Web site: inkheartmovie.com
Mortimer's wife disappeared and a cascade of characters, including a fire juggler named Dustfinger (Paul Bettany), a villain named Capricorn (Andy Serkis) and his henchmen, tumbled out of the pages and into the real world.
Now, fact and fantasy collide in a dangerous way as Mortimer, 12-year-old Meggie (Eliza Hope Bennett) and Great Aunt Elinor (Helen Mirren), a fussy book collector, are caught in a tug of war over "Inkheart" and Mortimer's magic powers.
"Inkheart," the first book in a trilogy, celebrates the wonder of reading, a subject rarely tackled on the screen. Watching someone read can be as deadly dull as observing someone write, but Elinor waves her hand around her library and marvels at the murder, mayhem and adventure that books promise to anyone who opens them.
But it's one thing to read about an ashen, glowing-eyed monster called the Shadow and another to watch it come to life in moments that seem more suited to a PG-13 rating than a PG. So don't be seduced by commercials that make "Inkheart" look like the second coming of the Adam Sandler Christmas comedy.
Iain Softley ("The Skeleton Key," "K-PAX," "The Wings of the Dove") directed "Inkheart," and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire, who recently wrote the book and lyrics for Broadway's "Shrek," adapted Funke's book.
The movie takes advantage of the beauty of locations such as Liguria, Italy, but I wish the filmmakers had been more playful with the idea of reading a story and making it come to life. One classic is re-created, a few others get brief nods and a much-needed jolt of levity is supplied by a refugee from "The Arabian Nights."
"Inkheart" benefits greatly from a supporting cast that includes Bettany, Mirren and Jim Broadbent as the author who is charmed by the world that sprouted in his imagination. The movie also dabbles in the notions of free will -- a character challenges the writer, insisting, "You don't control my fate, you're not my God" -- and fate.
As Meggie says, "You don't know what I can do, and neither do I." A spunky female heroine. Now that's something welcome on page or screen.
