Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Movie Review: The Spiderwick Chronicles

I haven't read the book so I can't compare to the movie. If I were to guess I'd say this book was written in the 40's in England. It has the same feel as many of the children's books written back then but updated for today.

In this movie a woman and her three kids move to a large house out in the country. She's recently divorced and can't afford their old place on just her salary. While exploring the big spooky house the surliest of the kids finds a book with a warning not to open or read it that he promptly ignores. Almost immediately unseen creatures described in the book start messing with the family. In fact pretty much everything that goes wrong in the movie is the direct result of that kid being a real idiot who can never follow sound advice.

As usual there's good invisible creatures and evil invisible creatures. The evil ones want the book's secrets so they can conquer the world.

It's a well done, richly populated fantasy story akin to "The Neverending Story". I rather preferred this movie to "The Neverending Story". It doesn't feel crammed to fit like so many movies in this genre do. But even so I probably won't get it on DVD. I dunno why. Go see it.

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