Fantasy has been making a comeback thanks to Lord of the Rings and New Line has certainly been looking for the next moneymaking fantasy series of films.
They attempt to bring Cornelia Funke’s books to the big screen, but the results prove that LOTR’s success is not something that can be engineered just because you want it to happen (or try and read if off a piece of paper).
Mortimer “Mo” Folchart (Brendan Fraser) is a Silvertongue. What that means is when he reads something aloud those things have a tendency to spring to life in our world. Sounds good, but to bring that something into our world something from our world has to go into the book’s world.
This is what happened to Mo when his wife ‘Resa (Sienna Guillory) was sucked into the rare novel Inkheart and fire juggler Dustfinger (Paul Bettany) and the villainous thief Capricorn (Andy Serkis) were brought into our reality.
The book was then lost and Mo and his twelve year old daughter Meggie (Eliza Bennett) have been searching for the rare tome for nine years, since Meggie was three. Mo hopes to “read” Resa back, but the characters he released have been following him as well.
Dustfinger wants to return to his realm to his love (Jennifer Connelly, in a very brief cameo), but Capricorn wants to unleash his ally The Shadow so he can rule our world.
Capricorn kidnaps Meggie and now Mo has to rescue her with the help of Dustfinger, Farid (Rafi Gavron), an Arabian character read into our world, Meggie’s grandmother Elinor (Helen Mirren), and Fenoglio (Jim Broadbent), the reclusive author of Inkheart.
Inkheart is a film full of interesting ideas. It’s just that those ideas feel rushed and never seem to gel. Maybe it’s lacking heart [insert rimshot here]. Most of the characters are one dimensional.
Take Andy Serkis’ villain. He never feels like much of a threat and just chews the scenery – not that Serkis isn’t a pro at scenery digestion. Brendan Fraser also doesn’t put much effort into his character either. Paul Bettany brings more depth to his character and almost seems to be the focus of the film, but we’re supposed to see “Mo” and Meggie as the main characters.
The film offers some interesting ideas, reading fictional characters into life, but just as it offers them it seems it moves on to the next plot point and we’ve not had time to digest them (indigestion?). I asked my daughter what she thought of the film and she said five stars, my rating wasn’t as high but we’ll get to that at the end.
So some of you, like my daughter, might not recognize the seams showing or just love the movie. I’d have to say that it feels rushed and half-made-up. Perhaps the production needed to focus more on the human characters and not the special effects.
Inkheart is presented in a 1080p high definition transfer (2.40:1). Special features are in high definition, unless noted.
First up is the 6 minute “A Story from the Cast and Crew” in which each member contributes a sentence to a story. The 10 minute “From Imagination to the Page” has author Cornelia Funke describes how she wrote the books on which the film is based.
The 3 minute “Eliza Reads to Us” has Bennett reading a passage from Funke’s book. There are also 13 minutes of deleted scenes (in standard definition). The disc is also BD-Live enabled, if your player can handle it and a second disc has the film on DVD, but also provides a digital copy for your PC or portable device.
Inkheart had potential, but it just doesn’t come together. There was potential there but maybe the production needed their own Silvertongue to breathe some life into the film.
Inkheart [Blu-ray] is now available at Amazon . Visit the DVD database for more information.
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