Watching Inkheart

When watching this movie you somohow really realise that it is a US adaptation of an originally German book written by an author who spends most of her time fangirling anglophone Fantasy. I really felt it showed. As always, some time is spent at the beginning of the film making the characters relatable for the US standard viewer. Meggie is turned into what seems to be an American teenager (although that may just be the impression I got of her), she gets the Wizard of Oz to read instead of Peter Pan, and they are OF COURSE not from here, they just travel around a lot to search for a book - and may or may not be American.

Also, the story is set in what appear to be the late eighties, car and clothes-wise, for no particular reason - maybe to make the story more "timeless", but it felt more like "hey, things are backwards in Europe!" to me - and all signs are in English, even in Switzerland. Ten minutes into it, and it seems as though I am too easily offended to enjoy this movie already.

One big advantage is that the names which I found unbearable in my native tongue work for me in English. I don't know why, they're direct translations, but for some reason, “Silvertongue” does not feel as though someone's scraping their nails over a blackboard, “Zauberzunge” does and had me wincing, as well as “Mo”, or “Meggie”. People round here just aren't called like that. Sometimes, it just seems to me that the German author adores anglophone Fantasy and it shows in the books. Some of the names did work for me, Staubfinger is just as good as Dustfinger, for instance.

There are of course massive plot alterations, not all of them are bad. While they don't do the most sensible thing and simply go to the author to get help with obtaining a copy of Inkheart like they do in the book, they do clear up the mother-situation a lot sooner. It was not very surprising when it happened in the book, and shortening that episode makes the film more interesting for me when that part of the plot made me impatient in the books.

Some things were terribly inconsistent, like Meggie spontaneously being able to write stories as well as read people out of them, or Elinor being so completely and utterly useless when in reality she is pretty kick-ass, or the little romance they apparently shoehorned into the story at the very end. Also, I can't shake off the feeling that the movie makers missed the point of the book, the part the reader has in understanding a book and creating a fictional world, there is none or very little of that here apart fromt he skelettal basics of people being able to read characters out of books. It was obvious that they were going to simplify some parts of this already simple series even more.

As in the book, I was rather disappointed that they didn't realise the full potential of being able to read characters out of books and do something more akin to the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny instead of wasting time to read some of the most aggravating characters in the history of Western literature out of books, like Toto, damnit. If you have a villain to dispose of, why go through all the trouble with getting a storm and whatnot if you could just read, I don't know, Superman out of the book and then sit back and watch as he saves the day? Come to think of it, why stop there? Why not get Hercules, or a humongous Mary-Sue or Greek god to help? This is of course not the movie's fault, though.

On the whole, I do like the actors they chose, though, with the possible exception of Brendan Fraser – if they wanted to have someone whose voice is so powerful that he can read characters out of the very pages of a book, I feel that they should have gotten someone who can actually read like that. I love of Pual Bettany's "Mad-Eye Moody Jr." Dustfinger, though, although this may be due to the fact that I love Paul Bettany, period, and I greatly enjoyed watching Andy "Capricorn" Serkis's face. Serkis really brought the movie to life for me, he felt most in character, and he was most interesting to watch.

All in all, it's a very colourful, pretty movie. Too fast paced, and it completely misses the point of the book, but it's pretty. Watching it is also much shorter than reading the book would be, so that's another point in favour. It does not live to the canon original, of course, but adaptations seldom do, the ending especially is an insult in it's cheesiness, but I doubt that can be avoided these days.