Inkheart

From the desk of The Movie Snob

Inkheart (C-). I really expected to enjoy this family-oriented action movie, starring that likable lug Brendan Fraser (Journey to the Center of the Earth). It got a good review in the Dallas Morning News, and it has a fine cast (Helen Mirren, The Queen; Jim Broadbent, Bridget Jones's Diary; Andy Serkis, The Lord of the Rings). The plot had promise: Fraser's character is a "silvertongue," meaning when he reads a book, the stuff he reads becomes reality. But when something enters our world, something from our world has to go into the book, and this inconvenient fact cost Fraser his wife some years ago. Since then he has been on a quest to find a copy of Inkheart, the book she disappeared into, dragging behind him their cute-as-a-button daughter Meggie (Eliza Bennett, Nanny McPhee). Turns out somebody has conjured up hordes of the bad guys out of that very book, and they have holed up in a remote Italian castle where they plot all sorts of mischief. I can't quite put my finger on why the movie doesn't work--maybe it's because the bad guys seem to hold all the cards the entire movie, while our little band of heroes is generally either in the dungeon or desperately trying not to get thrown in there. For whatever reason, this movie just didn't work for me.