BEFORE: Freddie Highmore carries over from "A Good Year", for what looks like a kid-friendly fantasy film. But then, I never know these days what exactly I'm in for. I've had my share of horror films already this April, it seems like the linking has forced me to celebrate "Half-Halloween", which is kind of like when people celebrate their half-birthdays at the six-month point. We're about as far away from Halloween right now as we can get - but I doubt that "Tusk" or "Get Out" or this film would link up to anything that's on the docket for this coming October, so I don't mind letting them slip in here.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" (Movie #2,819)
THE PLOT: Upon moving to the run-down Spiderwick Estate with their mother, twin brothers Jared and Simon Grace, find themselves pulled into a world full of faeries and other creatures.
AFTER: Based on the timing, it's hard to not treat this film as a sort of "Harry Potter" knock-off, considering that the movie was released in 2008, at the height of Potter-mania (between "Order of the Phoenix" and "The Half-Blood Prince" films) and even the first book came out in 2003, which is after the first Harry Potter film. It checks a lot of the same boxes - three teens, one of them especially attuned to using magic, absent parent (one here, two for Potter), a hereditary connection to more powerful magic experts, and a field guide to dangerous magical creatures (OK, that last one's more of a connection to "Fantastic Beasts", but that's also in the Potter-verse...)
The difference, however, is that everything in today's film feels very rushed, and nothing gets explained very well, while everything in the Potter-verse feels more drawn-out and lengthened (and even then, fans complained that there were sub-plots from the book that got ignored or glossed over...). There's a simple reason for this - where the Potter-verse made longer movies, even turning the last book into two movies, "The Spiderwick Chronicles" turned FOUR books into one 90-minute movie, so of course it feels compressed and sped-up.
So, unfortunately, there's not really time to explain what's happening or why, most of the time, anyway. The actors were evidently told to speak very quickly to cram in as much information as possible into an hour and a half, but it's all for naught, because I haven't got a clue how anything works in this magical story. The IMDB plotline says the humans got "pulled into an alternate world", but that's not accurate. It's more like the world of goblins, trolls and faeries is always there, but most people don't have the resources (or imagination?) to see it. So it's kind of weird that people manage to not bump into all these invisible creatures that are everywhere in the forest - so are they really there, or not? Or is it possible that people have to believe, or be a little crazy to see them? This is all quite unclear.
Who, exactly, was Arthur Spiderwick, other than the great-uncle of these kids? How did he first gain the knowledge of these magical creatures, or the ability to see them? What made him special (or crazy?) and how did this effect his daughter, Lucinda, who happens to be the kids' aunt? (On their mother's side, we suppose, but this isn't really explained either, except that their mother believes she's going to inherit the house, but never bothers to check the paperwork on that. Not cool.)
There's a whole bit with the absent father, and while Jared believes that the father's a great guy and that the break-up is his mother's fault, the other two kids seem to have a better handle on things. I'm fine with them not really delving into the failed relationship, because it's probably a downer, and its only real purpose is to further distinguish Jared from Simon - and this is needed because the twin boys are played by the same actor. Different haircuts isn't enough.
I meant to talk about "Counterpart" the other day, after the film "Allied", where a wife's identity as a possible spy was called into question. It's a series on Starz that I recorded on the DVR, and I've only had the chance to watch it in the last 2 weeks. One episode a night for 10 nights, and that's the only way I can binge-watch a series, it seems. (Gotta get to "The Amazing Race" and "The Detour" next, then maybe I can finally finish "Stranger Things" and then watch "Lost" this summer...) Anyway, "Counterpart" is a spy series set in two worlds with different timelines, and J.K. Simmons plays a dual role as his character from one parallel world crosses over to the other. I'm guessing any actor would jump at the chance to play two roles, to portray two "mostly identical" characters, but with some subtle nuanced difference. The split-screen effects hearken back to "The Patty Duke Show" with its genetically-impossible "identical cousins", or maybe it's more of a "Prisoner of Zenda"/"Man in the Iron Mask" thing, but either way it's a staple of acting that's only gotten better with SPFX. J.K. Simmons is great on "Counterpart" because he can bring so much to each role, the nicer Howard who's faithful to his wife, has a menial job at the agency and the other Howard who's more ruthless and a top-notch spy.
It's often hard to distinguish between the two brothers here, other than the fact that one speaks in a higher, softer voice and the other one disobeys and acts out more. Plus the movie is always finding ways to separate them, in order to cut down on the number of effects shots, no doubt. Jared, the one who finds the book, is the more daring one, but he's also less likely to follow directions - like there's a note on the book that explains all the dangers to come from reading the book, but he dives right in anyway. What part of "Do NOT Read this Book" did he fail to understand? This whole thing is very hard to understand - who writes a book that shouldn't be read? What, exactly, happens to people who read the book? What was he supposed to do INSTEAD of reading the book? Unclear, unclear, unclear. He needed the knowledge in the book to defeat the nasties, and if there were some repercussions that came from reading the book, what were they, and why didn't they happen?
Furthermore, he's told time and time again that the book MUST stay in the house, that's the only place where it's safe. So WHY does he keep taking it with him when he leaves? This kid is just terrible at following instructions - and again, what, exactly, is the danger of taking it outside the circle, and why don't any of those bad things seem to happen? And how, exactly, would the big boss ogre use the book to take over faerie-land? Doesn't he already know what these creatures are, and how to dominate them?
Even when Jared brings the book to his great-aunt, the only other person who understands it, things get even more unclear. "Oh, dear, you read the book, that's very bad!" "Don't worry, I only read part of it!" So, then, that's only sort of bad? Are there degrees of good and bad? Typical millennial kid, he doesn't even have the attention span to read a whole book - I bet he only read the Cliffs Notes, that's safe, right?
Also starring Mary-Louise Parker (last seen in "Red Dragon"), Sarah Bolger, David Strathairn (last seen in "Bob Roberts"), Joan Plowright (last seen in "101 Dalmatians"), with the voices of Seth Rogen (last seen in "Take This Waltz"), Nick Nolte (last seen in "The Ridiculous 6"), Ron Perlman (last seen in "Moonwalkers"), Martin Short (last seen in "The Big Picture"), and a cameo from Andrew McCarthy (last seen in "St. Elmo's Fire").
RATING: 4 out of 10 bags of tomato sauce
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