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By Cole Smithey

‘Inkheart’

Starring Brendan Fraser, Eliza Bennett, Paul Bettany and Helen Mirren
Rated PG, 105 minutes

Movie Trailer

Based on Cornelia Funke’s 2003 fantasy kid’s novel, director Iain Softley makes a half-hearted adaptation that’s further diminished by Brendan Fraser’s signature boy scout performance as Mo Folchart, who is a “silvertongue” — that’s somebody able to physically conjure up characters and elements of reality from any book that they read out loud.

While on vacation in Italy with his 12-year-old daughter Meggie (Eliza Bennett) bookbinder Folchart finds what he’s been searching for — an adventure novel entitled “Inkheart” with which he plans to bring back his wife Resa (Sienna Guillory), who was lost to the manuscript some years ago in exchange for a one of its fictional characters. Fire-juggler Dustfinger (Paul Bettany) pursues Folchart to obtain the book so that he can return to his literary life within its pages. Meggie realizes that she too is a silvertongue right about the time that “Inkheart’s” diabolical literary-figure-made-flesh Capricorn (Andy Serkis), makes his move with his minions to take over the world. Winged monkeys and a minotaur that you don’t get a good look at make up some of the mediocre special effects in an unsatisfying kid’s movie.

Through flashback exposition we learn that when Meggie was three Folchart read aloud from a book entitled “Inkheart,” of which there are only five remaining copies, and brought to life Dustfinger, Capricorn and a slew of lesser characters. Now on vacation, Folchart and Meggie are houseguests to Meggie’s wealthy aunt Elinor (Helen Mirren), whose antique-appointed estate becomes an easy target for Capricorn and his crew to tear apart. Capricorn kidnaps Meggie and her dad tracks down Fenoglio (Jim Broadbent), the author of “Inkheart,” to get some much needed assistance in retrieving his daughter before she’s made to read into existence more people and artifacts to aid in Capricorn’s dastardly plans.

It’s crushing to see an extraordinary actress like Mirren trying to feel her way through a movie so lacking in purpose that the audience never really knows what’s at stake. As it turns out, Folchart’s wife Resa inexplicably has not been hiding in the pages of “Inkheart” for all these years, but rather has been living as a mute (her muteness is also never properly unexplained) prisoner servant in Italy.

The story also falls apart on crucial issues of protagonist and antagonist. Namely, who is Resa other than a fading romantic idea for her husband and daughter, and what exactly is Capricorn’s plot? Capricorn is by far the film’s most intriguing character, and Serkis eats the scenery like Johnny Rotten at Pistol’s performance. But Serkis’s admirable energy is not nearly enough to compensate for the film’s inexcusable lack of emotional or narrative grist. The film feels like some renaissance fair project.

There’s little evidence onscreen to demonstrate Funke’s status as the “German J.K. Rowling.” While it seems possible that the following two books in the trilogy (“Inkspell” and ‘Inkdeath”) will eventually make their way to the big screen there’s nothing in “Inkheart” to excite audiences about the proposition. CV 

‘Bride Wars’

Starring Anne Hathaway, Kate Hudson, Candice Bergen and Chris Pratt, Rated PG, 90 minutes

Movie Trailer

With a title like “Bride Wars” you’d expect some explosive comic moments of wedding sabotage and subterfuge, but instead you get a clunky formulaic romantic comedy, even by Hollywood standards. Had Liv (Kate Hudson) married her best friend and rival Emma (Anne Hathaway) it would have at least followed in the manner of the pair’s giddy love fest relationship that suffers a relatively brief catfight.

Best friends since childhood, Liv and Emma have long shared a dream of holding their wedding day at Manhattan’s glamorous Plaza Hotel. Crisis comes via wedding planner extraordinaire Marion St. Claire (Candice Bergen), whose voice-over narration provides unnecessary exposition. St. Claire’s facade of nuptial planning perfection collapses when she mixes the dates of Liv’s and Emma’s June weddings to coincide on the same day. Obligatory shopping, arguing and dance sequences lead to a feeble climax. For their part, Hudson and Hathaway share little chemistry together in spite of their polished individual comic abilities. The worst thing about “Bride Wars” is that it’s a boring movie.

Every year Hollywood spits out a quota of romantic comedies not fit even for airline viewing. As years pass, the standby of rom-coms centered around weddings have started to resemble museum artifacts associated with a tradition of marriage that more and more people look at as obsolete. From its opening childhood flashback sequence of young Liv and Emma gazing longingly at the bride in a wedding ceremony, “Bride Wars” adopts a condescending tone of commercial satisfaction that Hudson and Hathaway have bought into hook, line and sinker. The film’s would-be target audience of 10 to 16-year-old girls will want to go home and prissy themselves up dreaming of a day that, as statistics show, may not come. That’s not to say that this audience is missing the retail message about buying clothes, jewelry, make-up, and all-things “dreamy.”

Emma’s low income as a schoolteacher matters not compared with Liv’s fat bank account from working as a hotshot corporate attorney. The income discrepancy is just one of many ripe opportunities for satire that the screenwriting committee of Greg DePaul, Casey Wilson, and June Diane Raphael skip over in favor of stumbling through two acts of “OMG” shopping kissyface. The about-to-be-husbands are as bland as toast, and it’s in this particular area of masculine representation that the writers hit a stream of false notes. Without interesting secondary characters, the film has nowhere to go when the camera isn’t on Hudson or Hathaway.

Hudson is listed as one of the film’s three producers and at this point in her active-but-second-rate career, she seems to believe doing a fluff movie opposite rising star Hathaway will lend some momentum in spite of the source material’s less than banal substance. It’s been a long time since Hudson’s terrific performance in “Almost Famous” made her famous, and the young actress is clearly capable of much better work. Sometimes you just need better script readers. CV

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