Director: Iain Softley

Starring: Brendan Fraser, Paul Bettany, Helen Mirren, Eliza Bennett, Andy Serkis

Rating:

Well, here we go again. Big-budget Hollywood movies based on bestselling children’s books seem to be two-a-penny these days, be it the endless run of Potters, the latest Narnia adaptation or a franchise-killer such as The Golden Compass (and we’re not even mentioning 2006’s Eragon out of respect for anyone still experiencing ’Nam-style flashbacks after having suffered through it). Inkheart is merely the most recent in a long line of films to prove that if a kid waits around long enough they never have to read anything – all they have to do is rent the book in movie form from Blockbuster. Although seeing as Inkheart is all about the joys of reading, that’s a rather ironic side-effect...

The story is adapted (fairly) faithfully from the multi-million-selling book by German author Cornelia Funke. It tells the story of 12-year-old Meggie (Eliza Bennett, who last popped up as one of the kids in Nanny McPhee) and her father, Mo (Brendan Fraser), as they search for Meggie’s missing mother. Mo has the ability to “read” characters out of books and into the real world – handy if they’re good guys, a bit of a pisser if they’re the evil winged monkeys from The Wizard Of Oz – and accidentally trapped his wife inside a book named Inkheart when Meggie was little. Now he’s managed to track down another copy and wants to “read” her out again... but bad guy Capricorn (Andy Serkis), once a character in Inkheart but now living quite happily here with us, will do anything to harness Mo’s powers for himself. Meanwhile, Mo and Meggie also have to deal with Dustfinger (Paul Bettany), a fire-eater trying to find his way back into his book; Meggie’s intrepid Great Aunt Eleanor (Helen Mirren); Inkheart’s real-life author Fenoglio (Jim Broadbent); and Farid (Ravi Gavron), an Arab boy from Arabian Nights who’s seriously out of his depth in the 21st century.

From the above you’ve probably already deduced that this is quite a complicated film: as is often the way with literary adaptations, there are too many characters and plot threads on display as the filmmakers try to squeeze in every last line of the book. What’s odd about Inkheart, though, is that even as it does this it also wastes vast amounts of time showing us characters talking over what’s just happened, or finding out things that we already know. Far too much of the film is spent skulking around Capricorn’s castle, too (by the end you’ll feel as though you know every bloody inch) and not enough on the father/daughter relationship between Mo and Meggie, which isn’t really sold by a bewildered looking Fraser – his performance is so restrained that it seems he’s thinking about something else all the way through (his lunch? His outstanding DIY jobs? Whether he’ll be starring in Mummy movies until he dies?). Bettany’s Dustfinger is a bit of a disappointment as well: since when is a fire-eating ferret-handler this dull?

It’s a good job that Mirren and Broadbent are on fine form as the oldies tagging along on the adventure, and the finale is great fun, even if the Big Bad does look suspiciously like a Balrog. It’s just a pity that Inkheart takes so long to get going – as far as movies based on books about books go, it’s anything but a pageturner.

Jayne Nelson