REEL Quick DVD Reviews: SPIDERWICK, IN BRUGES, VANTAGE POINT and more
July 1st, 2008
THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES
THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES is something of a rare commodity in the family film genre: it is not only refreshingly mature, but also intensely exciting. I can’t think of many such flicks that on an emotional level so seriously and effectively wrestle with the effect of divorce on a child, nor on an entertainment level provide such a genuinely pervading sense of danger and tension. That’s all the more impressive given that in the end it all really comes down to something as ridiculously simple as keeping a book away from a bad guy. Nevertheless there were numerous sequences that had me glued to my screen, whether out of sheer wonder, or just good-old fashioned enthrallment with some of the film’s more intense moments (especially its climax).
The film’s (and by extension the book’s) imagination is also something behold. The film’s fantastical world is not only lovingly painted (all the more apparent in Blu-Ray), it seems to me welcomingly old-fashioned with its great cast of goblins, fairies, griffins, whether good or bad. It’s not just the cast though, it’s the word itself as the film revels in its sublime imagination. In that sense THE SPIDERWICK CHORNICLES’ greatest trick is not only that it appeals to a child’s sense of wonder, but that it can allow an adult like myself to recall my own.
Overall rating: B+
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