Two words: For children.
Apparently based on a series of books, also called The Spiderwick Chronicles, this film tries so hard to capture the magic of Harry Potter and the visual style of A Series of Unfortunate Events. Tried, but failed.
One of the problems was its excessive use of CGI. And that's the trade-off right there. More CGI, less realism. Which is why I like animatronics better.
Don't get me wrong, the CGI shots were great, of course. They were, after all, done by Industrial Light and Magic. But when there's more CGI than real people, then they should've just animated the whole thing.
Anyway, Seth Rogen once again lends his voice to one of the CG characters called Hogsqueal, who is a talking pig that eats birds. Nick Nolte is terrific as the evil sorcerer Mulgarath (such a lovely, fantasy-sounding name), although his actual screentime was, what, five minutes? Mary-Louise Parker also appears as the recently divorced mom, though she is not the star of this movie, so we are not allowed to soak in her beautiful face. But the best performance of all comes from the young Freddie Highmore, who successfully pulled off playing twin brothers with different personalities. This boy's acting skills are way beyond his peers'.
So, to end this, let me just say that this was a ho-hum movie, with a ho-hum plot, and that's-nice-but-ho-hum special effects.
*some info from IMDb and Wikipedia
pic from londonist.com
The Spiderwick Chronicles. USA. 2008.
Rating: Five out of ten.
