INKHEART: A REVIEW

This father-daughter film is one you won't want to miss!

Based on Cornelia Funke’s novel Inkheart, the film stars Brendan Fraser as Mo Folchart, a bookbinder and father. His daughter is Meggie Folchart (played by Eliza Hope Bennett) and the duo live in a van they use to travel around Europe, as Mo remains mobile to respond to calls to repair old books. Since they never remain in one place for very long, Meggie has been mostly homeschooled and her only friends are within the pages of the books she reads. Mo has never read aloud to her that she can recall, either.

Today Mo is headed to another shop that called him and requested his expertise to bind an old book. Secretly, however, he also wants to go to this shop because it has a copy of a novel he desperately wants. The title for this novel is Inkheart, and why Mo wants it is not immediately clear. Waiting outside for her father to exit the shop, Meggie spots a horned marten and attempts to make friends with it, only for the creature to snap at her. “Careful,” warns a tall, scarred stranger (played by Paul Bettany), “he bites. Hello, Meggie.”

Unnerved, the girl asks the man how he knows her name. He claims to be an old friend of her father’s, but when Mo comes out and freezes, it is clear to Meggie that her father sees this man as a threat. She is even more confused when the stranger calls her father “Silvertongue” but her request for clarification gets no answer from Mo, who tells her to go to the van.

Mo and the stranger – Dustfinger – take a short walk, with Dustfinger demanding to know whether or not he “has it.” Since Mo will not give him a straight answer, Dustfinger warns him that someone named Capricorn is getting closer to finding him and his daughter. He offers to help the two in exchange for the book but Mo hits him and runs off, to find Meggie has come looking for him. He grabs her and runs to the van. They get in and take off, a frustrated Dustfinger watching as they peel out of town.

Quite worried, Meggie demands answers but Mo simply says that they will go stay with her great-aunt, Elinor (Helen Mirren). Elinor is not happy to have a child in her home since she is convinced that children are all badly behaved and that Meggie will destroy her collection of books. Furthermore, she is convinced that Meggie’s mother, Mo’s wife Resa, ran off and she says as much over dinner. This upsets Meggie and Mo must assure his daughter that her mother didn’t abandon them, though he also does not answer her question about what happened to Resa.

The quiet is interrupted when Dustfinger appears, having contracted with Capricorn’s thugs to get the copy of Inkheart that he knows Mo possesses. Mo, Meggie, and Elinor are all captured by the men with him and taken to Capricorn (Andy Serkis)’s village. Once there the villain forces Mo to reveal that he is a Silvertongue, someone with the power to read things – and people – out of books.

But when Mo reads someone or something out of a book, someone or something from the real world goes in to the novel. Resa didn’t run away – the night Mo was reading Inkheart aloud to a three-year-old Meggie, several characters came out of the book: Dustfinger, Capricorn, and Capricorn’s right-hand stooge Basta (Jaime Foreman). In an exchange that Mo did not anticipate because he didn’t realize he had this power, Resa was sent into the world of Inkheart. He has been hunting for copies of the book ever since in an effort to find her – something Capricorn anticipated, since he has ensured that the majority of Inkheart’s copies were all destroyed. Now only a few are left, and he burns the copy that Mo has, to both the bookbinder’s and Dustfinger’s horror.

After all, why would Capricorn want to go back to his book? The real world has no defense against him, not like Inkheart’s world does. He can write his own story in blood and shadow here – if Mo will read his greatest weapon out of the novel, that is. With Meggie in his clutches, too, Capricorn has the perfect leverage against Mo.

Now they have to find a way to escape Capricorn, get another copy of Inkheart, and send the villain back before he can acquire his desires. But with a selfish coward like Dustfinger along for the ride and Meggie proving to have inherited her father’s gift, finding a safe haven from which to strike may not be as easy as it sounds!

Inkheart is a great movie with great acting. Brendan Fraser dominates the film as Mo, a desperate father and husband who will do anything to get his wife back and to protect his daughter. Better known in some circles for his more comedic roles, this serious character interpretation lets him stretch his wings and devour the scenery in a way never seen before. His performance is absolutely beautiful and worth the purchase price alone.

Paul Bettany still manages to steal many a scene for himself, though, matching Fraser’s portrayal with his own. Those who liked him in the MCU will be gobsmacked by his portayal of Dustfinger in Inkheart. Meanwhile, Helen Mirren takes her fair share of the film’s best scenes, too, as one would expect of such an accomplished actress. Andy Serkis proves his versatility as Capricorn as well; he is all calculated malevolence and cruelty here, even when he is cackling like a madman, rahter than the sad and childish position he took playing Gollum. Jamie Foreman wisely does not try to one-up him, but focuses on doing his best to keep up with him enough to be a plausible right-hand bad guy who is terrified of nothing – except witchcraft and curses.

Eliza Hope Bennett has a lot of competition in this movie and was probably taking notes during scene breaks, as being surrounded by this much talent was definitely an education all its own. She ably balances sweet kindness with the fierce determination of a girl who isn’t certain just what she is capable of, but she’s going to try her best to protect those she loves. It says something that she leaves an impression at all, and that any of the other actors and actresses have room breathe in this film, since with this much talent rubbing shoulders, one would think there would not be any oxygen left for someone else to shine!

But the movie lets everyone have their due, and thus Inkheart deserves to grace as many shelves as possible. Unfortunately, the film never got the sequels it deserved, but the book it is based upon does have two sequels, so fans do not have to let the tale end when the credits roll. Make sure to snap up this film and the book trilogy besides, as it may just be what you need to make your movie and book collections complete!