Inkheart (DVD)

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One of the problems that Warner/New Line may have faced with their 2008 fantasy "Inkheart" was that it followed another children's fantasy adventure with a similar theme, "Bedtime Stories," by only a few weeks, and audiences might have confused the two pictures. Yeah, well, that and the fact that "Inkheart" isn't all that original or engaging.

It is remarkable, isn't it, how Hollywood keeps coming up with simultaneous releases of similar material? Makes you wonder if it's really just coincidence, or if screenwriters don't eavesdrop on their rivals. Who knows. In any case, it makes it hard sometimes for viewers to know which version of something to watch.

Then, too, audiences had the choice of Adam Sandler in "Bedtime Stories" and Brendan Fraser in "Inkheart." Maybe for a lot of people, these two actors have been in so many silly, comic pictures, it was hard to make a distinction between them. In any case, in "Inkheart," based on the work of author Cornelia Funke ("The Thief Lord"), Fraser again plays a sweet but somewhat befuddled hero waging war against the forces of fantastical darkness. By now, he must be getting used to it, but the act is growing stale.

Be that as it may, "The Lord of the Rings" and the "Harry Potter" movies already set the bar pretty high for fantasies, and "Inkheart" never attains those lofty peaks. "Inkheart" is more prosaic than they are, and it never seems anywhere near as magical.

Here's the premise: Fraser plays a guy named Mo Folchart who is a "silvertongue," a man born with the gift of being able to bring fictional book characters to life. If he reads a story aloud, the fictional characters enter our world, and people from our world replace them in theirs. For reasons unknown (because the story never tells us), he fails to discover this gift until he is well into adulthood and has a wife and young daughter. Then one evening he reads a story aloud to them, and, yeah, you guessed it, the story's characters come to life in our world, and his wife, Resa (Sienna Guillory), disappears into theirs. Why the child didn't also disappear into the fictional world, the story doesn't explain. Get used to it.

Mo was reading a book called "Inkheart" when he lost his wife, and somehow he lost the book as well. In order to get his wife back, he must find another copy of the book to read aloud, but it's out of print and hard to find. So twelve years go by in the blink of a caption card, during which time Mo has been scouring every bookstore in the world looking for another edition. Meanwhile, his daughter, Meggie (Eliza Hope Bennett), has grown into her teen years and keeps wondering why her father drags her all around the globe from country to country. Apparently, they spent a good deal of time in England because while Mo speaks with a decidedly American accent, the daughter speaks in an English accent. Go figure.

The main plot kicks in when some of the book's characters themselves come looking for the book. The head baddie is no-goodnik named Capricorn, played by Andy Serkis. He's a cowardly bully, but it's not his fault. As another book character, Dustfinger (Paul Bettany), something of a dim bulb, tells us, That's the way the author wrote them. Remember Jessica Rabbit's line from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit": "I'm not bad; I'm just drawn that way"? Same here.

Anyway, the baddies (all of whom look like postapocalyptic Neo-Nazis) want Mo's abilities to make other book characters and events come to life in order for them to become rich and powerful. But here's the thing: They already have a silvertongue working for them. So why do they need Mo specifically? I dunno.

Early on in the story, Mo and Meggie go to Italy to meet with their aunt, Elinor, played by Helen Mirren. Elinor is a grande dame who lives in what looks like a lavish, storybook villa on Lake Como, a palazzo actually. As we ponder how she came into such wealth, she gets caught up in the adventure. Then, about halfway through the story the heroes find the author of "Inkheart," a fellow named Fenoglio, played by Jim Broadbent, an actor who seems to appear in all of these fantasy pictures. Mo figures Fenoglio would have an extra copy of his own book lying around. OK, but if Mo finds the author so easily, why didn't he look him up a dozen years before when he first went on his book-hunting quest? A little later the heroes meet Farid (Rafi Gavron), a lad from the "Arabian Nights" who speaks perfect twentieth-century English. Again, go figure.