Word: inkheart
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...played Chaucer, a Wimbledon contender and the voice of Jarvis, Iron Man's all-knowing computer. He has appeared in the movie versions of such best sellers as A Beautiful Mind, Master and Commander, The Da Vinci Code and now Cornelia Funke's Inkheart, in which he plays a guy who can make fire with his hands. After all that culture, what does Paul Bettany turn to for entertainment...
...Inkheart's parlance, people with this talent for reading literature into flesh and blood are known as "Silvertongues." (In the similarly themed Christmas release Bedtime Stories, they were known as Adam Sandler). For Mo Folchart (Brendan Fraser), being a Silvertongue has proved something of a curse. Nine years ago he read aloud from book called Inkheart to disastrous consequences. Out popped several bandits, including head villain Capricorn (Andy Serkis) and a gloomy fellow named Dustfingers (Paul Bettany) who starts fires with his hands. As if that weren't bad enough, into the book went Mo's wife, Resa (Sienna Guillory...
...Elinor (Mirren) or his daughter Meggie (Eliza Bennett), now a relatively well-adjusted 12-year-old despite having endured a childhood almost entirely without bedtime stories. For nine long years, Mo has been dragging the poor girl on a tour of European bookshops looking for the out-of-print Inkheart, hoping to read his wife back out. Presumably the story is set in a time before the Internet, when abebooks.com might have helped...
...They are a uniformly frustrating lot, brightened only by regular quips from Mirren or the always marvelous Jim Broadbent, who plays the fictional Inkheart's author, Fenoglio. He and Mirren mine their parts for any comic angle, wisely staying out of the dramatic fray. Bettany looks as though he's itching to do the same, but he gets stuck with a lot of self-important strutting and moping and as result, he fares the worst. The movie veers between silly and scary, but ultimately, its tone and level of violence seem inappropriate for either a typical PG audience or Funke...
...unfortunate timing for Softley's adaptation to arrive in theaters right after Bedtime Stories. It's not that Inkheart suffers in direct comparison - Bedtime was soundly spanked by critics - but the similarities do deflate the appeal of the premise. To overcome that, the film has to offer something special, going beyond the easy score of referencing classic works of children's literature. Certainly it's a treat to see a Silvertongue bring The Wizard of Oz's Toto to life, or enjoy the visual gag of seeing Capricorn's henchman land in the middle of Kansas, post-tornado...