Film Reviews

Inkheart

• Rating:
• Director: Iain Softley
• Starring: Brendan Fraser
• Details: US/Germany/UK / 106mins (12A).

"Someone has to get us out of this... and it's not going to be the writer!" Brendan Fraser plays Mo, a book doctor who has never told his daughter Resa (Sienna Guillroy) a bedtime story. Why? Mo is a 'silver tongue', which means every time he reads a book out loud a character comes alive - including its evil characters. Another problem is that if a character appears in real life, a real person is banished to the book forever - in this case Mo's wife and Resa's mother Meggie (Eliza Bennett). Mo spends his time tracking down a rare copy of the book and not far behind him is one of the book's characters, Dustfinger (Bettany), who needs Mo to read him back 'in'. All the while, the evil Capricorn (Serkis) needs Mo to read 'out' The Shadow, his world-destroying monster. Phew, if that sounds like a lot, you're not wrong: Inkheart is filled with a million and one ideas and every one of them a belter.
Although Fraser and Mirren are capable, it's Bettany and Serkis who steal the show. Serkis is the perfect fantasy villain, all menacing eyebrows and a cold delivery; Bettany fleshes out his heart-broken anti-hero and really throws himself into the story. What stops Inkheart from being the perfect children's fantasy story, is that there was perhaps too much scope to play around with - of all the books in the world writer Cornelia Funke could have tapped into, Inkheart only touches on a few and her story deserves a Chronicles Of Narnia epic.

Review by Gavin Burke