I remember when Bastian Balthazar Bux changed my life.
I was an only child of nine; he was an only child of around eight. We both dreaded math tests.
And when he opened the amulet-emblazoned cover of "The Neverending Story" in the 1984 film of the same name, the fantasy-fiction bibliophile in me was born.
Flash forward to 2009's "Inkheart," a film with the potential to be that classic that inspires a generation of lonely geeks to turn to literature. Instead, the film splutters from start to finish, lacking a basic feature fundamental to the medium it promotes - a sound plot.
Brendan Fraser, fresh off two abhorrent films in 2008, can't seem to stay away from badly written screenplays.
In this, Fraser plays Mortimer "Mo" Folchart, a book restorer who is also a 'silvertongue,' a person who can bring what he reads aloud into being. However, for every person or thing that escapes from the book, someone in the real world gets pulled in. It is an uncontrollable, "Jumanji"-like caveat Mo discovers. When he reads a fantasy adventure titled "Inkheart" to his young daughter Meggie (Eliza Bennett), Mo accidentally throws his wife Resa (Sienna Guillory) into the tome, while bringing the main villain, Capricorn, a fire-juggler, out.
Stringing Meggie along, Mo spends the next nine years searching for the rare book in order to bring Resa back. He is hounded by the fire-juggler Dustfinger, played by Paul "You should have learned from 'A Knight's Tale'" Bettany, who just wants to go home.
Meanwhile, Capricorn (a campy, sans-Gollum Andy Serkis), schemes to bring the ultimate evil out of "Inkheart."Tack on Helen Mirren ("The Queen") as an eccentric aunt, the ever-quirky Jim Broadbent as "Inkheart"'s author and a smattering of ineffectual literary characters, and you have a convoluted plot with enough holes to strain spaghetti.
Never mind Meggie's inexplicable British accent or Fraser's occasional regression to a smart-alecky "Mummy" tone. And for good measure, we can forgive Mo for never trying to find the author in the first place or even looking for the book on Amazon.com.
The silvertongue power itself brings up multiple issues the film does not bother to remedy. For example, does the power apply to just children's books or could you read anything aloud? What happens when you read the same passage twice? Why couldn't the author rewrite the book's plot when Capricorn first captures them, instead of waiting until the very end?
Although the film is set in a picturesque soft-lit Italian countryside and director Iain Softley ("K-PAX") pulls every fantastical flourish, these questions rob "Inkheart" of any magic it could have possessed.
Based on Cornelia Funke's bestselling German novel, perhaps the film does achieve its pro-literacy message in the end. If the written word is indeed so powerful, why watch the movie when you can read the book?
Grade: C
Verdict: Even Helen Mirren riding atop a unicorn wasn't able to get this movie off the ground.
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