Movie Review: Inkheart

	RATING: PG GENRE: Adventure fantasy RELEASE DATE: January 23, 2009 RUNNING TIME: 106 minutes VIOLENCE FACTOR: A bit of stylized action violence and moments of menace that might scare the very young BAD WORDS: A brief and mild reference, hardly noticeable RACY?: No OTHER THINGS TO KNOW GRANDS

A girl learns that her father's magical power played a role in her mother's disappearance

by Bill Wine

CRITIQUE:

It's got some ink and a decent amount of heart, but what Inkheart hasn't got is oomph.

This fantasy-adventure, adapted by screenwriter David Lindsay-Abaire, along with Cornelia Funke the best-selling author of the book, tells of a spunky girl and her single father who has a special ability that is a curse as well as a blessing.

Brendan Fraser plays Mo Folchart, a book collector who is a Silvertongue: He has the magical gift of being able to bring fictional characters to real life by reading aloud from the novels that describe them.

Eliza Bennett plays his teenage daughter, Meggie, who misses her mother terribly. Meggie doesn't know the reason her mother, Resa (Sienna Guillory), has disappeared without explanation. But we learn that when her dad read aloud from the medieval-fantasy novel Inkheart ten years ago, it released a megalomaniac named Capricorn (Andy Serkis) into the real world. Because a rule for Silvertongues dictates that for every character "read out" of a book another must be "read in," Mo's wife was sucked into the book.

Mo has been searching  for copies of the book in the hope of getting Resa back, while Capricorn is seeking to capture Mo and use the Silvertongue's extraordinary power for his own villainous purposes.

With a cast that includes powerhouse talent like Paul Bettany, Jim Broadbent, and Helen Mirren, Inkheart is laden with skilled acting talent, and they help create moments of real emotional impact.

The problem is director Iain Softley switches tones unsteadily, going from comedy to drama and back, and bounces between the real world and the fantasy world too often for clarity. The Silvertongue's ability, enchanting on the page, has not translated well to the screen. (Remember how well the Harry Potter narratives work both on the page and onscreen.) Inkheart also seems completely arbitrary in the fortunes and misfortunes of its characters. 

Still, few grandparents would complain about any movie that promotes books as forcefully as this one does. And all but the youngest grandkids (who might find it too scary) are likely to get lost in it.

It's a pity that Inkheart works better as an endorsement of reading than as a rousing, involving drama.

Before you head out to the theater, check out other recent movie reviews by Bill Wine, like Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Hotel for Dogs.