Inkheart

The only reason I would ever see this movie is if I had to kill some time because something happened with plans. Well, it happened, so I was stuck to choose between Inkheart and the third Underworld movie. Seeing as how I turned off the first Underworld movie about 30 minutes in, the choice was simple. I would go watch Brenden Frasier play a variation of the same character he has played in most of his movies. He was so good in his role on Scrubs, you would think he could do more challenging work, but here he is in a young person movie full of CGI.

Mo(Frasier) is a "silver tongue," which is to say that when he reads books out loud, the things he reads show up in the real world. It sounds like it could be cool, but every time he does it, someone near him ends up being transferred into the world of the book. Nine years ago was the last time he did it because it sent his wife into a book called Inkheart. He has spent the last nine years searching for another copy of that rare book to try and read her back out. On his tail is Dustfinger(Paul bettany), a guy who can make fire with his hands. Dustfinger is a character from Inkheart that he read out and Dustfinger desperately wants to get back home. Also, Capricorn(Andy Serkis) is trying to catch Mo because Capricorn's silver tongue stutters and so things come out weird. Capricorn wants to bring the main villain from Inkheart, The Shadow, out into our world. Mo, Dustfinger, Mo's daughter, and Mo's mother in Law(Helen Mirren) must ban together to try and stop this travesty from happening.

I am not going to lie, this movie only had about 75% of my attention. The rest of the time my mind was wandering through the perils of student life. That is not necessarily a knock against the movie, I had pre-conceived notions going in that may have been a deciding factor. Brenden Frasier, who usually brings all kinds of energy to these types of movies, looked and played bored most of the time. He can usually at least make a funny face or goofily deliver a line to save a scene but here he cannot seem to be bothered to care, so why should we? Mirren is completely wasted in that typical eccentric old woman role and Andy Serkis is completely 1-note as the cardboard cut-out villain. The only actors who seem to be trying are Paul bettany, whose Dustfinger is perfectly tortured and self-serving and Jim Broadbent as the author of Inkheart. Both men actually give performances worthy of the big screen and Bettany's emotional quest is the only real connection an audience can find.

That being said, the effects are pretty cool, especially the twister scene inspired from The Wizard of Oz. The storm is nice and chase scene it inspires is kind of cool. Also, the climax is pretty cool. The Shadow looks very cool and again, a nice storm looking thing happens. The story is semi interesting, I guess, but I am not sure what I am supposed to take away from it. Is reading out loud dangerous? Will it inspire someone to be an author because they can literally bring their characters to life? Are the consequences of such a thing worth it? During the whole movie, all I could think about was how Mo's daughter had never been read aloud to. That made me sad because for a child to be read to is important. It made me think "No wonder she is so screwed up." I could totally be missing the point, but those are the things I thought.

Final Grade: C-