Mom Dragged Me to Inkheart

Certain actors and directors have been issued what I call my Pass for Life. This Pass for Life is given to the chosen few who've made enough solid films (or, in rare instances, just one mind-blowing movie) that all cinematic sins are forgiven them. In my estimation, the Pass for Life belongs to Rob Reiner (director of The Princess Bride and This Is Spinal Tap), Sir Ian McKellen (he's freaking Gandalf AND Magneto, people), and Harrison Ford (Han Solo had me at "I know"). You, dear reader, probably cannot deny any of those men the Pass for Life. All of them have earned it.


For some reason, however, my mom thinks that one can just haphazardly issue the Pass for Life. That can be the only reason that BRENDAN FRASER holds her Pass for Life. I enjoyed the first Mummy movie as much as (and possibly more than) the next guy, but seriously? Seriously? Pass for Life for Encino Man Brendan Fraser?? Ah, well. Anyway, that's how I got stuck spending my Saturday involuntarily watching Inkheart.

Surprisingly enough, it wasn't excruciatingly painful. Inkheart's just another one of those passable kiddie fantasy movies that gives you a little something to do on Sunday afternoons when you're not too terribly busy. I only wish I could have waited until this one hit DVD instead of rushing out to the movie theater and having to sit through kid movie previews. I'll take this opportunity to mention the fact that I hate kid movie previews with a fiery passion. No, I don't care if Julia Roberts's niece acts now or if Zac Efron wants to redo Big.

So back to Inkheart, Iain Softley's adaptation of the Cornelia Funke novel. It's rather like Stranger than Fiction for kids, really, except far less irritating. Brendan Fraser plays a guy named Mo, who's a Silver Tongue. That means that when he reads aloud the words of any book, the very sound of his (boring, flat, uninteresting) voice yanks the images and characters off the page and into the real world and zaps somebody from the real world into the book. As somebody whose mom read to her the way only an elementary school teacher could, I find it hard to believe that this lame voice could possibly make anything cool happen. Anyway, so he's got this cute little family consisting of a wife, Resa (Sienna Guillory), and his young daughter, Meggie (Eliza Bennett). And one night way back before the movie's started, as Daddy's reading this Inkheart book, out leaps the villainous Capricorn (Andy Serkis), sexy fire juggler Dustfinger (the always underused Paul Bettany), and various strangely dressed creepers from what seems to be a pretty lame kid story and in goes the wifey. Whoops.

So for nine years, Mo's trying to track down the out-of-print book to send everybody back where they belong, without ever telling his little girl (who's not so surprisingly inherited his gift) that his boring reading is the real reason she doesn't remember anything about her mom. He finally gets his hands on a copy of Inkheart, but damn if unintentionally sexy Dustfinger and his sneaky pet weasel get involved before Mo can read his wife back into reality. Dustfinger just wants to go back to his woman (played by real-life wife Jennifer Connelly), but since Mo's more concerned about getting Resa back, he doesn't want to read at the command of some fictional character. Fine, says Dustfinger. I'll get Capricorn to help me out. That's a bad game plan. Capricorn just wants to stay in the human realm, and to do that, he's hoping to enlist the aid of Mo to read out The Shadow, the part of the book that he didn't get to the last time he read it. The Shadow looks a lot like the sand wall trick from The Mummy, and it likes to eat people. Fire juggler's turn to say whoops.

Anyway, the movie's all about using this whole Silver Tongue trick to one's advantage to save the day.

Let's not forget that Helen Mirren's here, too. Rather unnecessarily, but still enjoyably here. She plays Meggie's feisty, book-loving great aunt, and while they don't really need her help, she sure is fun to watch.

The movie wants to tell us two things: just how magical the written word can be and how each man is a ruler of his own fate. And the written word can be quite magical. Too bad this particular movie isn't really the one to prove that. Light on visual effects (all the visual effects, however, really work) and heavy on weird costuming (check out the hairstyles for some of the henchmen types), it barely feels like a lot of the kiddie fantasy fare that's been shoved down our throats the last couple of years (e.g. Narnia). Sure, it's cute and good enough to pass a couple of hours (there were some seriously draggy bits in the middle), but it won't convince you that everyone should be allowed to pick up a pen.

-Katie