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Inkheart
| Movie Rating: |
 | 8/10 |
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| DVD Rating: |
| 4/10 |
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| Overall Rating: |
| 7/10 |
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Movie Details: View Here
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Starring:
Brendan Fraser
Paul Bettany
Jim Broadbent
Helen Mirren
Andy Serkis
Special Features:
Eliza Reads To Us: Co-Star Eliza Bennett Shares A Favorite Inkheart Passage Not In The Movie, Accompanied By Cornelia Funke Illustrations
Other Info:
Video: Widescreen 1.85:1 Color (Anamorphic)
Standard 1.33:1 Color
Audio: English: Dolby Digital 5.1 [CC]
Subtitles: English, Spanish
Run Time: 106 min
Rating: PG
Synopsis from DVD Cover:
When Mo Folchart reads a story, the characters leap off the page. Literally. And that's a problem. Mo must somehow use his special powers to send the interlopers back to their world......and save ours. If ever a task was easier read than done, this is it. Mo and his daughter Meggie, aided by friends real and fictional, plunge into a thrilling quest that pits them against diabolical villains, fantastic beasts and dangers at every turn.
Quick Review:
Book loving kids (and adults) have a new story to love. "Inkheart" is a grand adventure, pulling in evil villains, eccentric aunts, a plucky heroine, and a novel's worth of literary references to give a whole new generation its own "Neverending Story." Yeah, there was that OTHER film where stories come to life (you know, with Sandler and a guinea pig), but where that one was cute in its way, this magical little movie embraces the very art of storytelling and writing - not to mention reading-in a fairytale of love, adventure, and the wonder of fiction.
We first meet Mortimer "Mo" Folchart (Brendan Fraser) as he reads the classic story of "Little Red Riding Hood" aloud to his daughter - prompting a lovely red riding hood to float down from the sky. Twelve years later, "book doctor" Mo and his daughter Meggie (Eliza Bennett) are perusing a marketplace in Germany where Mo has plans to search an old bookshop for a mysterious book that has eluded him for years - a paperback, we discover, called "Inkheart." Seems Mo is a Silvertongue - when he reads, he can bring things out of the book he's reading (twelve years ago, he brought out some of the characters in "Inkheart"), but someone else goes in (his wife Resa went in). What ensues is an exciting adventure in which Mo, Meggie, and a cast of friends and family work against evil villains and frightening shadow-y things to save Resa and the world. Yay books!
Now, having said that, I never read the original series of books by Cornelia Funke, so I can't say if this adaptation is anywhere near faithful. What I can say is this is a movie for the little bookworm writer girl I used to be. How fantastic is it to not only imagine that writing and reading can create real Totos and Arabian thieves, but that characters are living, breathing entities with lives and loves of their own that go on long after we've closed their pages? Fraser is always a good hero, and Bennett is a surprisingly natural, smart young lady who never comes off too precocious or too cool - she's a book girl, too. I think the story goes to Paul Bettany as Dustfinger, who conveys a depth of character that's both heroic and selfish, perfectly embodying a complex man who, even though he's fictional two times over, becomes very real. Everyone is good though - Helen Mirren gets off some great one-liners, and Andy Serkis is quite evil. There's never a slow down in the action, the visual effects never go over the top, and even though there's a set up for a sequel, it doesn't feel like that's the whole point, which is often the case in these types of films.
Unfortunately for DVD audiences, we don't get nearly as much as those Blu-ray guys. The only Special Feature is a reading by the very talented Bennett of her favorite part of the source material that didn't make it into the movie, accompanied by illustrations from Funke herself. It's a nice extra, especially for fans of the book, but again, it's the ONLY extra, and with a film this rich in story, effects, cast, and literary history, it's a disappointment.
In Conclusion:
Despite a lackluster Extras package, "Inkheart" is a terrific modern fairytale that will grab your imagination and make you want to read a really good story - or better yet, right one.
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