The more I think about the premise of the movie Inkheart, the more I realize it’s pretty fucking impossible to make it into a story with any danger that can’t be fixed in about half a second. The idea that like…five people in the damn world can speak written word and whatever they say occurs in real life is a neat concept, but if you fuck something up, it’s as simple as writing down the words “umm…undo that” and you’re ok. Naturally, I watched Inkheart thinking “there has to be some reason we don’t turn to such a simple solution, right?” I went through 90 minutes of this unintelligent nonsense thinking “well if you haven’t done this yet, something has to be stopping you,” only to get to the very end where idiot daughter writes on her arm “ummm…undo all this crap that happened” and everything fixes itself. Son of a bitch; I wish I could do that trick or I could have gotten this time of my life back.
Inkheart focuses around Mo (Brendan Fraser) who read aloud a story to his daughter Meggie 9 years ago that, considering the characters in it, I probably wouldn’t read to my young elementary school daughter unless I were after the “World’s Shittiest Parent” award. Not realizing he had the gift of the “Silvertongue” which brings what he reads aloud to life, he draws the evil characters of the book, “Inkheart” into his world, loses his wife, runs away and never reads words aloud again and instead wallows in misery trying to undo his mistake by finding another copy of the “Inkheart” book instead of writing on his arm “umm…undo that” followed by “and then out of the sky in front of me drops a steak dinner, a billion dollars, and a script for a movie that doesn’t rip off Last Action Hero or Jumanji.”
Something I have always been against, and I have mentioned it before in this blog, is the “convenience of inconvenience,” which Inkheart rubs in your face worse than an episode of 24. It’s the idea that the perfect inconvenient situation is put into play for no real reason than to allow for a plot of a story to happen. Like Mo, who can’t control what comes in and out of the books he reads so chooses not to try for 9 years. He’s the only character with this ditsy problem…which is a problem for about 5 minutes of the movie before he realizes “oh wait…maybe I can control everything…but now I’m captured.” Conveniently inconvenient on many counts, which just means lazy script-writing. There’s no way this wasn’t based off of a book, this just oozes of “shitty adaptation.”
Of course, with a movie that blatantly ignores plot loopholes so large you could film a much better flick in them, it only makes sense that every other part of this could fall flat on its face too and of course, it does. I drudged through this feeling bad for Paul Bettany, Andy Serkis, and Helen Mirren for getting themselves wrapped up in the kind of movie that isn’t even worth the resume line for an extra. Not so much Brendan Fraser because I’m convinced he only finds roles where people look at them and say “well, that didn’t require any talent,” but the other three? Shame on them.
There was no depth to anybody, no fun, no humor, no reason to really feel any suspense. Everyone just kind of moped around waiting for someone else to do something, then they would spring into action…which usually meant whining about why this was going on in this first place. This movie also didn’t know when it was supposed to take place, everyone was wearing 1990s Old Navy clothing but all of the equipment and surroundings looked like some secluded castle during the Nazi Germany era.
Inkheart could have done leaps and better with everything that made it unique than it actually did. It is cool to see your favorite storybook characters come to life…but Inkheart doesn’t really do that with the exception of “The Wizard of Oz” where it brings back Toto and a flying monkey in an obvious statement that says “shut up, we’re on a budget and we want to waste it all on special effects for the 5 minute final sequence.” It cheats you horribly into thinking you’re about to immerse yourself in an adventure packed story with creative plays on classic tales and humor derived from the greatest literary characters being forced to manage in this world but because nobody’s ever read the book “Inkheart” you have nothing to relate to.
The problems with this movie were immense and painfully noticeable and I just sat staring as scene after scene rolled by wondering when any ounce of logic was going to enter this screenplay. It finally did at the very end when the credits rolled from the bottom of the screen to the top slowly to give people a chance to read them. That made perfect sense to me! I was pleased about that. But other than that, I hand this movie an abysmal 4 dustbusters out of 10, write on my arm “ummm…never ever try and pull this shit again” and pray that every movie studio everywhere is forced to follow the commands of my silvertongue.
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