I love all things meta. Like all things musical, I am more subjective than normal with all things meta and I tend to rate it a little higher even if it objectively sucks. But I'm not going to do that with Inkheart. It's not that Inkheart is bad. It's just too disappointing. It has all the things that would make me go pee. Meta, Brendan Fraser, Paul Bettany, and British accents. And because the world revolves around me, they even threw in Harry Zidler a.k.a. Jim Broadbent to make me happy. I thought I would finally wake up and enjoy the movie, with Harry Zidler in the picture, but Inkheart was so mundane that I spent the entire movie in salumbaba mode.The funny thing is, what makes it so much blah is it's lack of trivial mundane character interaction. Let me explain. The movie starts off with a cheesy narration. Of how a person does not know she or he is a Silvertongue, until it's too late. What is a Silvertongue? Why, it's this person who can bring stories into life. Like real, in a way that the-character-comes-out-of-book-and-your-wife-goes-in-book-for-replacement-now-you-have-to-find-the-out-of-copy-book-to-bring-her-back-because-you-idiotically-let-your-book-burn kind of real.
Yeah, knowing a tad too late kind of sucks.
So, after the narration on how sucky Brendan Fraser's life's going to be, the scene cuts to title and then cuts back to the action. And when I say action, I meant the background music going tun-tun-tuh-duh-dun. Sure, they showed Brendan Fraser with his whats-her-name daughter, being all fatherly and daughterly in the van, before the background music sets off, but that's the only time I remembered they did. All their other interactions after that were I-love-you-dad! I love-you-what's-her-name!
You see, I can't possibly believe that. How can you expect me to believe in love if not for the little things? There was also this supposed sexual tension (crush, whatever) with Farid (a brought to life servant or something of the Forty Thieves), and what's-her-name. But I swear, Dustfinger (a brought to life anti-hero they kept on pointing out was selfish, no wonder he was) love-hates Farid was homoerotic. Yay for homosexuality! Yay for subtlety! The basic rule they tell us in writing class is "show, don't tell." Without subtlety, you're either going to end up too cheesy, or too fake.
But I'm not complaining about the actors. They did well. The characters were cheesy or fake because they lacked a little spotlight. What the movie gives is too much background music telling me that I should be scared, or grabbing my seat in suspense now, or saying "awwww" at the monkey. It's too much action without establishment. That's why even the action failed.
Okay, everything (except the actors) failed. The movie failed. So sad really. Especially for Brendan Fraser. Having this movie after that, that, that... what the hell would we call that Mummy 3? (It certainly wasn't a movie.) I wanted to watch Journey to the Center of the Earth just because he was in it, but Inkheart and Mummy 3 makes me think that Brendan Fraser, as my mother would say, "May balat sa pwet." Basically, I think 2008 wasn't a good year for him.
4/10
