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Inkheart
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MPAA RATING: PG for fantasy adventure action, some scary moments and brief language
Starring Brendan Fraser, Paul Bettany, Helen Mirren, Jim Broadbent, Andy Serkis, Sienna Guillory, Eliza Hope Bennett, and Rafi Gavron
Mortimer "Mo" Folchart and his 12-year-old daughter, Meggie, share an extraordinary gift for bringing characters from books to life when they read aloud. But there is a danger: when a character is brought to life from a book, a real person disappears into its pages. On one of their trips to a secondhand book shop, Mo hears voices he hasn't heard for years, and when he locates the book they're coming from, it sends a shiver up his spine. It's Inkheart, a book filled with illustrations of medieval castles and strange creatures--a book he's been searching for since Meggie was three years old, when her mother, Resa, vanished into its mystical world. But Mo's plan to use the book to find and rescue Resa is thwarted when Capricorn, the evil villain of Inkheart, kidnaps Meggie and, discovering she has inherited her father's gift, demands that she bring his most powerful ally to life--the Shadow. Determined to rescue his daughter and send the fictional characters back where they belong, Mo assembles a small group of friends and family--some from the real world, some from the pages of books--and embarks on a daring and perilous journey to set things right. (Warner Brothers)
| GENRE(S): | Adventure | Family/Kids | Fantasy |
| WRITTEN BY: |
David Lindsay-Abaire
Cornelia Funke (novel) |
| DIRECTED BY: | Iain Softley |
| RELEASE DATE: | Theatrical: January 23, 2009 |
| RUNNING TIME: | 106 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: | Germany | UK | USA |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
The average user rating for this movie is 6.7 (out of 10) based on 9 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
James M. gave it a7:
The Movie was a little slow I thought Brenden Fraiser did preety good I think the last part of the movie was grea†
Darren C. gave it a4:
The movie started off quite interesting but quickly spiraled into a horribly slow, childish story. The charaters are poorly acted and all exaggerated beyond believability. I struggled frequently throughout the movie finding that I would often lose any immersion and I would find myself simply staring at the screen with absolutely no idea why any of it is happening.
Linda H. gave it a6:
Inkheart never really gets off the ground; it lacks a spark of excitement or originality that left me wanting something. The characters lacked depth and did not engage the viewers sympathy.
kg m. gave it a3:
The scenic vistas are absolutely gorgeous and the concept of the movie that a ‘silvertongue’ can bring characters to life from a book seems sorta interesting. Unfortunately, this power comes w. a price and while fictional characters are brought to life – Mo’s wife is spirited away to the fictional realm. The movie then becomes one of finding and then rescuing his wife. That seems like it might be an interesting adventure too but while the movie offers unicorns and flying monkeys—they don’t seem to do anything or even have a purpose for being. And while you might expect Mo’s travels to be all over the world with endless possibilities—most of the action takes place at one castle. And the villains are neither funny nor scary. And you know you scraping the bottom of the barrel when the monster from the Mummy movie series appears to morph into this one. There isn’t a single poignant moment in the whole flick. Potential: yes. Result: lame.
Mona A. gave it a10:
I loved this movie. It's exciting and it develops its plot and characters well. I remember I enjoyed the book, and now I enjoyed the film.
Chad S. gave it a4:
Read to your kids, the child-rearing experts say, it's beneficial to their emotional well-being; a nightly bedtime story might make them smarter too. In Tobe Hooper's "Poltergeist", the television is rendered as an object of malevolence, while the parents act as its facilitators, when they leave their young daughter alone with the electronic babysitter. This derelict couple, the film implies, should be reading to their child instead of smoking reefer. Contrary to the aging flower-children, Mo Folchart(Brendan Fraser) is a model father; he puts Meggie(Eliza Bennett) to sleep with his silver tongue, but gets punished anyway, for his troubles. The result: Meggie grows up without a mother. Hopefully, small children who see "Inkheart" won't make the wrongheaded association between reading and parental abandonment. So mom is text-based now, thanks to dad, or was, once one with the morphemes, because this disappointing film never allows both father and daughter from entering the fictional realm. Resa(Sienna Guillory) crossed-back over, off-screen, which makes the whole of the film's remaining running time seem anti-climactic. This unfortunate story choice sucks the drama right out of "Inkheart", since Mo's quest seems a lot less daunting, now that another "silver tongue" granted his wife safe passage from the novel. In this sense, the father isn't pro-active enough. The filmmaker should have thrown away the literary source, and taken its cues from the Steve Barron-directed music video for A-ha's "Take on Me". Not only does the short film mediate two disparate worlds better than "Inkheart", the hero(A-ha frontman Morten Harket) is personally responsible for brokering the waitress' safe return to her own world. "Inkheart" lacks, quite ironically, imagination, by remaining entrenched in the terrestrial world. In a film where a book-burning seems halfway justifiable, what occurs between Mo and Dustfinger acts as a poor suture for the pros of reading, since the silver tongue's seemingly benevolent oral recitation could also be construed as a sentencing. Compare that scene to the final scene in "Poltergeist", where the father removes the television set from his family's motel room.
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