The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008)

Stars: Freddie Highmore, Mary-Louise Parker, Nick Nolte, Sarah Bolger, Seth Rogen, Martin Short
Genre: Adventure, Family, Fantasy
Rating: C-
 

Even by the standard of being a film based on a not exactly good series of books, The Spiderwick Chronicles falls flat.  The film follows Jared Grace (Highmore), his identical twin brother Simon (Highmore), and their older sister Mallory (Bolger) as they encounter a series of magical creatures after moving into their great-aunt’s (Plowright) estate, Spiderwick Estate.  After moving to their new home and discovering Arthur Spiderwick’s field guide to all things magical Jared discovers that a house brownie/boggart, Thumbletack (Short), is living in the home, and that the shape shifting ogre Mulgarath (Nolte) and his goblin army wants the field guide so that they can use it to wage a war against all other magical creatures.  It’s up to the Grace children to save the day.

The movie’s biggest success was Highmore’s performance.  He has shown himself to have the potential to be a great actor, both in this movie and in some of his earlier works.  Here he plays not one but two very distinct characters, and if you pay attention you can easily tell them apart. It’s not even just that the boys have different personalities; Highmore plays them with different mannerisms and different voices – even more of a success if you consider that his accent in this movie isn’t his natural one to begin with.  The other acting isn’t bad, but the characters are all lacking substance so none of the performances really stand out.  This is a problem of the books themselves that the filmmakers chose not to address.  The one problem of the books that they did address was the lack of plot in the individual books themselves.  When taken as a whole, the entire series is good and suspenseful, but individually the books are too short and lacking in climax.  The film addresses this by trying to approach the entire series in one go, instead of each book individually.  As such a lot of the individual elements from the books are removed or condensed, but the overall story remains.  I think in that sense I preferred the movie to the books; while it wasn’t overly gripping or suspenseful, it was one complete story.  It wasn't the best movie... but it also wasn't the worst.