Inkheart (Blu-ray) (2009)

"...packs a welcome amount of entertainment value, creating a genuinely original world of enchantment.  Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post
"An epic adventure for the entire family!  Jake Hamilton, CBS-TV
"...brimming with fascinating ideas and elevated by some memorable performances.  Jason Buchanan, TV Guide
"Wildly entertaining! A joyride.  Karen Durbin, Elle
"...celebrates the power of literature and reminds us that stories have a life beyond the page, even if they are only in our hearts and minds.  Sean Axmaker, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Editor's Note Cornelia Funke?s best-selling novel, INKHEART, comes to life in director Iain Softley?s (THE SKELETON KEY, THE WINGS OF THE DOVE) feature-film adaptation of the same name. For 12 years, bookbinder Mo (Brendan Fraser) and his daughter, Meggie (Eliza Hope Bennett), have been traveling the world, poking around secondhand bookstores. Meggie correctly assumes that her father is looking for her mother, Resa (Sienna Guillory), who disappeared without a trace. What Meggie doesn?t know is that Mo is a Silvertongue, and when he reads a story aloud, the details and characters come to vivid life. But when a character comes out of a book, someone has to go back in, and Mo is searching a copy of the book, titled "Inkheart," into which Resa literally disappeared. When Mo read the story aloud, unaware of his powers, she was sucked into the story, and the fantastical novel?s villainous characters were released. Now, Mo and Meggie have to keep evil Capricorn and his henchmen from realizing their diabolical plot, and send everyone back where they belong. INKHEART is awash with colorful details. Capricorn has had to make do with a stuttering Silvertongue who delivers characters that are half-read: text from the book is tattooed on their faces, or they suffer some other malady, emerging from the book mute or with an odd physical feature. Paul Bettany is engaging as Dustfinger, a character who desperately wants to be read back into "Inkheart" and return to his family, portrayed by Bettany?s real-life love, Jennifer Connelly, in a miss-her-if-you-blink performance. Helen Mirren is good fun as eccentric, feisty bibliophile Aunt Elinor, and Jim Broadbent appears as the novel?s author, who is enthralled by the possibilities of Mo?s gift.

	Eliza Bennett
	Helen Mirren
	Brendan Fraser
	Paul Bettany
	Andy Serkis
	Jim Broadbent
	Rafi Gavron
	Ileen Maisel - Executive Producer
	Roger Pratt - Director of Photography
	Jennifer Connelly - Cameo
	David Lindsay-Abaire - Screenwriter
	Mark Ordesky - Executive Producer
	Diana Pokorny - Producer
	Javier Navarrete - Composer
	Cornelia Funke - Producer
	Iain Softley - Producer
	Cornelia Funke - Source Writer
	Tobias Emmerich - Executive Producer
	Iain Softley - Director

Empire
3 stars out of 5 -- "Smartly directed by Iain Softley, who skips easily from comedy to fantasy to action, INKHEART gets by on a rich cast of supporting characters, a unique and intriguing look, and a good, big scary monster at the end." 01/01/2009 p.78

USA Today
"Based on Cornelia Funke's popular children's novel, this fantasy adventure saga has appealing moments, striking production design and a strong, mostly British cast." 01/24/2009

Entertainment Weekly
"The story is a whirl, a jumble, an effusion....There are close calls, weird whispers, amusing throwaway lines, the ditherings of a distractible author, and cartoon violence undertaken by misshapen scary-comic evil henchmen." -- Grade: B 01/30/2009

Washington Post
"The aesthetics of INKHEART are part of what make it such a surprisingly enjoyable experience to watch....Bettany's performance is nothing short of a revelation." 01/23/2009

ReelViews 7 of 10
With a premise as potentially rewarding as that of Inkheart, one can be forgiven for being a little disappointed by the final result. When placed alongside other PG-rated fantasy adventure tales, this one struggles to capture the imagination. Part of the problem results from a lack of internal consistency - the movie arbitrarily changes the rules to suit the circumstances. Another element is a failure to generate momentum. Although Inkheart reaches a climax, it doesn't build to it and, when it happens, it's more likely to provoke a shrug than an explosion of satisfaction. Inkheart looks good and is well acted but, in the end, it left me indifferent...Putting aside high-profile tales like The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter, live-action fantasy stories aimed at family audiences have not met with much success, and there's no reason to believe that Inkheart will fare appreciably better. The movie lacks the necessary hook to excite younger viewers and is not sufficiently sophisticated for older members of the audience. Children will get the most out of it because they will relate more strongly to Meggie and won't be as concerned with the film's structural flaws, but this isn't the kind of movie they'll be clamoring to see...Inkheart displays a reverence for books and, while it states its case for the well-worn pages of a novel offering a portal into a reality in the mind, it struggles a little to give life to that idea. The movie wants to be a sprawling excursion into fantasy and imagination but the screenplay limits it. The incorporation of elements from The Wizard of Oz are nice, but one wonders why characters and themes from many other equally well-known and beloved novels couldn't have been included. It's the limitations of the film when considering the nearly limitless possibilities suggested by the premise that make Inkheart a disappointment. As a children's film, it's okay but many adults will be less than enchanted. - James Berardinelli

Chicago Sun-Times 6 of 10
I never knew reading was so dangerous. No child seeing "Inkheart" will ever want to be read to again, especially if that child loves its mother, as so many do...The film opens with its best scene, for me, anyway: the professional book buyer Mo (Brendan Fraser) and Meggie, his 12-year-old daughter (Eliza Hope Bennett), poking through an open-air book market. As always I was trying to read the titles on the spines. Not realizing that "Inkheart" is based on a famous fantasy novel, I had the foolish hope the movie might be about books. No luck...At the edge of the market is a dark little bookstore presided over by a dark little man. As Mo prowls its aisles, he hears the faint chatter of fictional characters calling to him...Sixth sense leads him to discover, on an obscure shelf, the novel Inkheart, in the format of a Penguin mystery from the 1950s...We discover this is the very book Mo was reading when his wife, Meggie's mother (Sienna Guillory), was sucked into its pages, and that is the true story, Meggie, of how your mom suddenly disappeared when you were little. Yeah, right, dad. At the same time, various demonic creatures were liberated from the book's pages. They have now set up shop in a mountaintop castle and are conspiring to command Mo's power now that he has discovered their book again...The movie now descends into the realm of your basic good guys vs. wrathful wraiths formula, with pitched battles and skullduggery...Lots of screams, horrible fates almost happening, close scrapes, cries for help, special effects, monomania, quick thinking, pluck, fear and scrambling. You know the kinds of stuff. I learn there are two more novels in this series by Cornelia Funke, both of which will remain just as unread by me as the first. It is hard to guess what they will involve, however, because this one closes with a curiously cobbled-together ending that seems to solve everything, possibly as a talisman against a sequel. - Roger Ebert