What if you had the power to bring a book to life, simply by reading it aloud? Sounds interesting. What if you had the opportunity to bring that book to the big-screen and have Brendan Fraser in the starring role? No, just no! Based on the Cornelia Funke novel of the same name, the film also stars Helen Mirren, Eliza Bennett, Paul Bettany, Jim Broadbent, Andy Serkis, and Sienna Guillory. The story follows Mortimer (Fraser), a guy who makes books literally come to life when he reads them. The only problem being that when a book comes to life something or someone from the book comes into our reality and something from our reality goes into the book. He reads a book called Inkheart and his wife gets sucked into it. 12 years later, he finally attempts to rescue her from the book. Now, think about this premise for a little bit - this movie should have been epic! Think about all the classic literary characters that could have come into the fold. Other then, little Red Riding Hood we dont really see anything too inventive. It was surely meant to be a salute to the magic of reading as all the characters love books and often speak about their love of them. However, the film is ultimately incoherent, overly long, and snooze-inducing.
Jesse Gumbarge is editor and chief blogger at JarvisCity.com - He loves old-school horror films and starting pointless debates. You can reach out at: JesseGumbarge@JarvisCity.com
