Reading Is Magical!

Where were all these movies when I was a kid? Maybe it’s
because of technological advancements in special effects, or maybe it’s
the boggling success of Harry Potter, but today’s youth are
spoiled for choice when it comes to movies filled with magic and
swords—The Lord of the Rings, Stardust, The
Chronicles of Narnia. When I was growing up, we had to content
ourselves with the likes of Krull and Willow.

Not that I’m bitter, really. Because today’s kids also have to
suffer through dreck like Inkheart, based on a hugely successful
book I’d never heard of until right now. It’s written by Cornelia
Funke, AKA “the German J.K. Rowling” (I did not coin this honorific),
and it’s about a guy who reads stories aloud only to have them come to
life. So yeah, it’s the same premise as Bedtime Stories, that
shitty Adam Sandler movie that opened a couple weeks ago.

Brendan Fraser plays the guy, but before you run screaming out of
the theater, you should know that Helen Mirren and Jim Broadbent are
also in the movie, Paul Bettany gives a really good performance as a
character “read” to life, and Andy Serkis—Gollum in The Lord of the Rings—is a salaciously wicked villain.

So the question, then, is what the hell is Brendan Fraser doing in
this movie? Well, turns out Funke is a huge fan of “the Frase” (I
did coin this honorific) and had him in mind while she wrote
Inkheart. This stands to reason, since Fraser’s character,
Mortimer “Silvertongue” Folchart (yep, that’s actually his name), is
tedious, uninteresting, unheroic, stupid, and kind of a jerk. Or maybe
that’s just the way Fraser plays everybody.

Folchart and his daughter Meggie (a capable Eliza Hope Bennett) are
hunting for Meggie’s missing mother, who has vanished into the pages of
a book. You see, whenever Folchart reads something to life out of a
book, something from the real world must take its place. Of course,
things go awry, and other wacky characters spill out, including a thief
from the Arabian Nights, a plot development that, frankly, I am
still confused by. But Inkheart is intent on letting you know
that books are magically wonderful, and thusly shoots itself in the
foot—you’ll wish it would hurry up and end so you can go home and
read.