Inkheart - DVD Review

'the book had an underlying message about the value of the written word. The film half-heartedly tries to carry this through but knows that it's really saying, 'books are so valuable, we've made this one into a movie''

Kids movies of late have been pretty damn good with The Spiderwick Chronicles and, in particular, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events having genuine cross-over appeal for kids and adults and showing that movie studios can occasionally treat children as intelligent beings rather than portals to parental wallets.

High hopes abound then for Inkheart, another literary adaptation with similar fantasy themes. We alternatively follow Father and Daughter Folchart (Brendan Fraser and Eliza Bennett) who, together and apart are trying to get their spouse/mother (Sienna Guillory) from her imprisonment in the book 'Inkheart'. At the same time various characters in the book are roaming our world having a lark of a time whilst a few 'good' ones (Paul Bettany's 'Dustfinger') are trying to find their way home.

The MacGuffin that makes all of this possible is Frazer and Bennett's ability to bring novels to life by reading from the page which brings to mind all sorts of possibilities; a dragon to defend yourself perhaps, a robot or two from a sci-fi classic, how about a famous character like Peter Pan to help you on your way? But no, the film plumbs for the thief out of Ali Baba, Toto the dog from The Wizard of Oz and a few more animalistic side characters who get minor parts in this too. In all, it's a wasted opportunity although to be fair, licencing rights may have prevented a cross-over spectacular in which Harry Potter saves the day.

As a whole the sub-par characters imported by Fraser and Bennett are representative of the film as a whole. There's just enough dread to keep kids interested but not as much as there is in Spiderwick to really challenge them. There's some interesting set design and for that matter set pieces, but not as much as there is in Lemony Snickett to feed their imaginations. In all there's just... not enough of anything really.

I haven't read the book but bits of the film seem to hint that it had an underlying message about the value of the written word. The film half-heartedly tries to carry this through but knows that it's really saying, 'books are so valuable, we've made this one into a movie' and so gives up pretty early on. If it had been released 10 years ago, Inkheart probably would of made a decent fantasy-adventure but with comedy villains that are more comedy than villain and a simple 'rescue and protect' story that doesn't quite measure up, it falls a long way short of other available offerings.