Review

Review Date: 17-February-08
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Junk

The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008)

When people talk about fantasy writers' imaginations their focus is often wrong. The imagination tapped by a successful fantasy writer does not involve magical realms or beings. There is little new under the mythical sun, and for the most part that's okay; writers hold to a flourishing tradition which dictates the attributes of magical creatures, the path of heroes, the strengths and weaknesses of evil, and the nature of objects of power. When you pick up a new fantasy book you will find much that seems familiar. What sets a good one apart is how the writer finds an individual voice within the tradition. That's the imagination: personality within prescript. It involves tone and wit and language and, most of all, the creation of full-bodied characters.

I have not read the books that make up "The Spiderwick Chronicles," but based on the movie I would guess they are directed at younger children. That does not excuse them from the need of personality, and this movie has none. In telling the tale of a boy who moves into a big house, finds a magical book, and is besieged by goblins, it is content to rely on the audience's appetite for special effects without distinguishing itself in any way. The book at the center of the plot is said to contain rich details about a teeming magical world, the very acquaintance with which would provide an ogre with fatal power, yet the movie's own expression is flat and narrow.

This is most lamentable when it comes to the personal struggles that underpin the computer-generated hocus-pocus. The protagonist is the sullen half of a pair of twins (both played by Freddie Highmore looking mechanical) whose arrival at the house follows his parents' break-up. He does not know where to direct his anger, hides behind his iPod earplugs, yada, yada, yada. His mother (Mary-Louise Parker) is put-upon and misunderstood by her son; his older sister (Sarah Bolger) is snotty but helpful in a crunch. Her handiness with both sword and lip gloss is an offering to the girls in the theater, and I daresay the cameo by Andrew McCarthy as the absent, guilty father is a bone for parents who might enjoy being reminded of their own cinematic youth. In any case, the family issues feel like a particularly stale after-school special (Do they make those anymore? asks the Andrew McCarthy-era critic). The scene where the hero steps forth to confront his father, concluding with the punchline "Wrong answer," is almost painful in its banality, and the reunion of another lost father with his daughter is a feeble attempt to cast a spell (and possibly atone for deadbeat dads) during the movie's final gasp. Mired in triteness and propped up by mediocre magic, this story is a yawn. In refusing to employ their own imagination, the makers of "The Spiderwick Chronicles" failed to engage mine.

Copyright © 2008 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.