Sunday, 1 August 2.38pm
Inkheart
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    A young girl's father has the power to bring characters from books to life by reading those books aloud. When a power-hungry villain from a rare children's fable kidnaps the man, his daughter bands with a group of friends both real and imagined, to set things right.

    Rated: [ PG ] Mild violence and scary scenes
    Cinema release: 2 Apr 2009
    Director: Iain Softley
    Running time: 106 mins
    Stars: Brendan Fraser, Paul Bettany, Andy Serkis, Helen Mirren, Jim Broadbent
    Links: Official Site
    IMDb
    Rotten Tomatoes

    What we say
    Adventure for kids, storybook trainspotting for adults

    Paul Stock, MovieFix  
    3.5 star rating
    If you're annoyed by people who move their lips when they read to themselves, then "Inkheart" might give you reason to worry.

    In "Inkheart", Brendan Fraser plays Mortimer Folchart, a "silvertongue" with the rare ability to bring the characters in stories they read aloud to life, quite literally.

    The difficulty for our silvertongue is that when he last practised his skill, his wife disappeared into a book titled "Inkheart" - which Mortimer has since lost his copy of and is now out of print. Accompanied by his daughter Meggie (Eliza Hope Bennett), Mortimer searches second-hand bookshops searching for a copy of the book in the hope that he'll be able to read his wife out.

    The trouble is Capricorn (Andy Serkis), a sinister character who escaped from the same book where Mortimer lost his wife, is quite fond of the evil he can get away with in this world and would like to stay. In an effort to control the portal, Capricorn has snapped up every copy of "Inkheart" he can find and would quite like Mortimer to read across a few more of his devilish friends.

    Admittedly this reads a little like "Last Action Hero" meets "The Never Ending Story", but thankfully Bennett's character isn't as nauseating as you'd expect an English schoolgirl in a fantasy film to be.

    Fraser is characteristically swashbuckling, even as the bookish father. And Paul Bettany's integral performance as Dustfinger provides the requisite plot twists, in a well-crafted children's film that only insults the intelligence of the audience a little in the climatic scenes.

    "Inkheart" is a charming adventure story that should appeal to younger fans of the Harry Potter franchise as much as providing plenty of storybook trainspotting moments for adult viewers.

    Like the classic "The Never Ending Story", "Inkheart" engages that ideal that books (rather than films, apparently) are portals into worlds where remarkable things can happen. Thankfully, it does so with the aid of plenty of life-affirming messages about the merits of engaging with reality as much as the fantasy, and not leaving your destiny to some other writer.

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