Inkheart

Last night, instead of watching the Superbowl, I went out to dinner with a friend and then saw Inkheart. At first I was there purely for the eye candy (Brendan Fraser and Paul Bettany, yum) but then I got into the story. Fraser plays a man who causes stories to come to life when he reads them aloud (he didn't sound at all whiny, squeaky, or goofy, which sometimes happens with him), and Bettany plays one of the characters in the story.

Of course there's a villain and henchmen, and along the way Fraser's character's wife ends up in the book, leaving him and their young daughter alone against her will (when a character leaves a book, someone else goes in). My favorite scene (which actually had very little to do with the plot) was Bettany doing tricks with flaming batons, shirtless and glistening a little in a piazza. Gratuitous nudity is a very good thing.

It was beautifully filmed abroad which disoriented me (which I like in a movie) and there were some cool effects, and it was certainly an hour and 46 minutes of fun, if not thought-provoking visuals. Everything is not tied up in a neat little ball, there were holes in the story, and many of the details went missing, but that's ok. It's a kids' fantasy movie, after all. But if they had made the music more spooky-sounding, the lighting darker, and thrown in some smut it would have been a great movie for adults. I'm not into kid's movies in general, but if you ask me, the storyline was kind of dark to begin with (and by the way the daughter's British accent made no sense and was annoying, considering her mom said about 10 words). All in all, I had a good time and I'd watch it again, but not in the theater.