I can see what Inkheart was aiming for: a warming kid’s movie about the magic of books. It just didn’t work though – at all. The idea is fine, as proven by the much-loved The Neverending Story, but when you team it up with odious acting and badly paced story telling it falls flat – very flat.

Inkheart introduces us to Mo Folchart (Brendan Fraser), a “silver tongue”, a person capable of reading the characters and events out of books and into the real-world. One evening as he reads to his daughter he accidentally reads a handful of villains out of his fantasy story into his reading room and reads his wife into the book. The bad guys set up a base in the real world and decide they wish to stay and have no intention of being read back in.  They go about collecting and destroying all copies of the book they came from – Inkheart. Meanwhile Mo spends the next 10 years raising his daughter Meggie (Eliza Hope Bennet) alone as he tries to find Inkheart and rescue his wife.

 Problem number one for Inkheart is lead actor Brendon Fraser. The protagonist is supposed to be a “silver tongue”, able to bring the stories literally to life through their prestigious narration, however Brendon Fraser just doesn’t have the ability to pull this off – not even close. I don’t mind Brendan Fraser, per se, but I know where his acting abilities extend to and he should stick with movies that don’t ask so much of him.  Brendan: Mummies, good.  Talking, bad.

Problem number two is the disjointed pacing. I suppose I could ask “what pacing?” Even the climax was incredibly lack-luster, characters and plot developments dropped in and out without engaging the audience to care, and there didn’t seem to be any real direction. The characters travelled here and there, but no-where was particularly interesting and all they ended up doing was retracing back the way they came anyway.

There were plot holes you could drive a truck through (side-ways) but since it was pitched in the style of a fairy tale, I suppose that can be forgiven.  Usually, however, these sorts of holes are put there for dramatic purpose but they seemed to just remove any sense of danger and excitement. Oh well. 

The list of problems goes on though: None of the characters are particularly loveable – the rogue isn’t roguish enough, the hero not heroic, the love interest is boring, and the bad guy not very villainous. Is there anything to recommend about Inkheart?

Well, not really, actually. It obviously cost quite a bit to make – the special effects are good quality computer animation and the idea is laudable, but beyond that there’s no humour, no winks for the adults, no fun for the kids.