BEFORE: Ah, the best laid plans...I was supposed to start comic-book movies today, but my downstairs TV does not like store-bought DVDs, just ones that I made myself. The bought ones skip around - I keep meaning to replace the TV, but that would involve taking everything off the basement entertainment center and strengthening it with some nails or something, so it can hold a heavier TV. It's sort of falling apart...
Fortunately, I've got a back-up plan, and I'll continue the Brendan Fraser/fantasy world connection.
THE PLOT: A young girl discovers her father has an amazing talent to bring characters out of their books and must try to stop a freed villain from destroying them all, with the help of her father, her aunt, and a storybook's hero.
AFTER: This got kind of confusing, since the movie contains refers to a book titled "Inkheart", but it's also BASED on a book named "Inkheart", which features people looking for a book-within-a-book, also titled "Inkheart". So, what, exactly, is the plot of the book "Inkheart"? Is it the book, or the book-within-a-book?
Either way, there wasn't much here to hold my attention. I ended up falling asleep mid-way through, and not waking up until after it was over. I had to bring the DVD with me to work and finish watching it there (after 5 pm, of course...)
Essentially, Brendan Fraser's character has the ability to bring ficitonal characters into the real world while reading a book. Unfortunately, for every character he brings out, a real person gets sucked in. But this is confusing - do they just live in the fictional world, do they get added to the plot, can they change the fictional world? The movie is very short on details...
So Fraser's character travels around Europe's bookstores with his daughter, looking for a copy of this rare book, so he can read his wife OUT of the book. Again, unless she somehow becomes part of the plot, I don't see how this is possible. Well, I don't see how ANY of this is possible, but I'm willing to go along with it, up to a point.
Or maybe not - in the end I didn't find it all that entertaining or even interesting. Yeah, there are references to other books like "The Wizard of Oz", which are stories the audience actually cares about. "Inkheart", not so much - since we never find out exactly what happens in that damn book!
There's a villain from the book, named Capricorn, who was freed from the book many years ago, and he's amassed a power base in his castle - but what are his evil plans, exactly? Again, not too many details other than getting people to read the treasure out of stories like "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves".
But why did Capricorn need to get the flying monkeys from "The Wizard of Oz", a minotaur, the crocodile from "Peter Pan", etc. What the heck was he going to do with all these characters?
At least in movies like "The Never-Ending Story", we learned a little bit about the story mentioned in the title! It's a sort of a cute idea - but it was done better in films like "Bedtime Stories". I realize it's mainly a movie for kids, but it was so confusing and hard to swallow - I can't see kids enjoying this.
Also starring Paul Bettany, Andy Serkis, Helen Mirren, Jim Broadbent, with a cameo from Jennifer Connelly.
RATING: 3 out of 10 fireballs
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