Inkheart

Review By: Tom Herrmann
TomHerrmann@TheCinemaSource.com

Movie Grade: B
DVD Features Grade: D
Overall Grade: C

In the past year Brendan Fraser has been the lead role in three family adventure films, none of which looked very promising. Overall, he hasn’t really ever done good film aside from The Mummy and Airheads, but the latter is absolutely a guilty pleasure kind of movie. He was in Crash, which was excellent but his part wasn’t exactly a lead role so I wouldn’t count it as a Brendan Fraser movie. With those three mentioned films and probably the best episode of Scrubs aside, Fraser’s filmography is filled with forgettable comedies and family films the likes of Bedazzled and Dudley Do-Right.

Mortimer "Mo" Folchart (Brendan Fraser) and his daughter Meggie (Eliza Bennett) are travelers who don’t seem to have a particular destination set out. Mo has a strange obsession with finding old bookstores and looking intently for something he has been keeping a secret to his daughter. We eventually learn that Mo has a power to bring what he reads to life and that nine years before he accidentally brought to life characters from the book Inkheart. When this happened several characters came out of the book while at the same time his wife was drawn into the book. Now Mo and his daughter have been found by the characters who want to use his powers to rule the world, all while Mo just wants to bring his wife back.

The movie isn’t without its moments but it is definitely without an original idea. Everything seen in the film is reminiscent of some other fantasy story that has been told. It is hard to decide whether the main plot is more a rip-off of The Pagemaster or The Neverending Story but it is definitely similar to both. One of the perks has to be the constant references to other fantasy stories from the things that are dragged from stories. There are mythical creatures and iconic objects like the glass slipper from Cinderella. There are also a few times when they mention a ticking crocodile like the one that constantly taunts Captain Hook in Peter Pan.

The good thing about this being intended for a younger audience is that the clichés won’t be as bothersome to them. As a child everything seems new and fresh because you haven’t been exposed to constant imitations or even the originals yet. Since The Pagemaster is now fifteen years old and The Neverending Story is a whopping twenty-five years old, the target audience of this will most likely be more than pleased with the magic and wonder it has taken from these films.

The special features on this DVD don’t add anything to the film at all. It is the film’s star Eliza Bennett reading a passage from the book that did not make its way into the movie. Why someone would want to hear this is somewhat confusing to ...