Inkheart

Movies based on books are sometimes fantastic and most of the time pretty bad. Inkheart, while a good book, doesn’t work as a movie. Why? because the author, Cornelia Funke, wanted to make this into a movie all along and discard the book. Don’t believe me? Here’s why I think this.

Her protagonist, Mo ‘Silvertongue’ Folchart was based on Brendan Fraser, the guy playing Mo in the film! Now this is an interesting way to do things but silly in my opinion. Fraser is a lack luster actor who brings nothing special to the screen. He does alright but is very average as an actor. He’s never done an awesome film. The first two Mummy movies were his best and they still weren’t that good.

Anyway, Inkheart does have a good core message that reading is fun. It is. I love to read and Inkheart the book was much more enjoyable with MY imagination than the film was. Mo, when reading out loud, brings things and characters out from the pages into real life. While this is a sweet trick that I wish I could do, it comes with a heavy price. When something is taking out of the book something goes in. His wife, Resa, (Sienna Guillory) (you may recognize her as Arya from Eragon, the worst book to film translation of all time) is sucked into a book called Inkheart and several characters pulled from it. The entire plot is about a bad guy named Capricorn (Andy Serkis) trying to capture Mo so that he can read more stuff to life. Mo, is searching for a copy of Inkheart so that he might read his wife back out. Mo and his daughter Meggie Folchart (Eliza Hope Bennett) are visited by Dustfinger (Paul Bettany) another Inkheart escapee. Dustfinger wants back in the book and does every selfish thing he can to get back there. Meggie just wants her mom back and only finds out after Mo tells her. Of course, they are capture by Capricorn first.

You’ll have to read the book to find out what happens. I don’t suggest you see the film at all. It’s a big pile of meh. The CGi is fun but the story the book tells is so much more enjoyable than the one the movie tells. This absolutely confounds me as the author helped write the movie script. Regardless, the movie moves too fast and doesn’t spend time getting to know any character and thus, it’s lame. The quality of the movie was fine (unlike Eragon) but the story was lacking because of the book. Go see something else and pass on Inkheart.

Until next time, read a book and watch out for those Critical Hits!

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