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Inkheart
New Line Cinema (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Inkheart reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 47 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
N/A out of 10
based on 23 reviews
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How did we calculate this?
based on 0 votes
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Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: PG for fantasy adventure action, some scary moments and brief language

Starring Brendan Fraser, Paul Bettany, Helen Mirren, Jim Broadbent, Andy Serkis, Sienna Guillory, Eliza Hope Bennett, and Rafi Gavron

Mortimer "Mo" Folchart and his 12-year-old daughter, Meggie, share an extraordinary gift for bringing characters from books to life when they read aloud. But there is a danger: when a character is brought to life from a book, a real person disappears into its pages. On one of their trips to a secondhand book shop, Mo hears voices he hasn't heard for years, and when he locates the book they're coming from, it sends a shiver up his spine. It's Inkheart, a book filled with illustrations of medieval castles and strange creatures--a book he's been searching for since Meggie was three years old, when her mother, Resa, vanished into its mystical world. But Mo's plan to use the book to find and rescue Resa is thwarted when Capricorn, the evil villain of Inkheart, kidnaps Meggie and, discovering she has inherited her father's gift, demands that she bring his most powerful ally to life--the Shadow. Determined to rescue his daughter and send the fictional characters back where they belong, Mo assembles a small group of friends and family--some from the real world, some from the pages of books--and embarks on a daring and perilous journey to set things right. (Warner Brothers)


GENRE(S): Adventure  |  Family/Kids  |  Fantasy  
WRITTEN BY: David Lindsay-Abaire
Cornelia Funke (novel)
 
DIRECTED BY: Iain Softley  
RELEASE DATE: Theatrical: January 23, 2009 
RUNNING TIME: 106 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: Germany | UK | USA 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

78
Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Inkheart was shot in and around Liguria on the Italian Riviera, and it looks absolutely ravishing.
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75
The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson
The story itself is so charmingly dense, fractious, and complicated that it frequently leaves the obvious good-guy-fights-bad-guy groove, and noses toward Terry Gilliam-esque randomness and ebullience.
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75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
Inkheart feels a little confused in its tone and direction, but only a little, and I appreciate the way it both celebrates the power of literature and reminds us that stories have a life beyond the page, even if they are only in our hearts and minds.
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75
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Mirren's all-out display in this distinctly British absurdo-literary extravaganza had me wishing Elinor were my own fabulous auntie and that she'd lend me some magic items from her closet.
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70
Washington Post Ann Hornaday
For the young people in its demographic wheelhouse, Inkheart packs a welcome amount of entertainment value, creating a genuinely original world of enchantment.
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63
USA Today Claudia Puig
It's a shame that by its conclusion the movie feels like just another special-effects-driven story.
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63
TV Guide Jason Buchanan
A film that's brimming with fascinating ideas and elevated by some memorable performances.
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63
Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
A fine ensemble, some gorgeous Italian Riviera locales, intermittent flashes of magic amid a more manufactured air of whimsy.
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63
ReelViews James Berardinelli
Inkheart looks good and is well acted but, in the end, it left me indifferent.
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50
Variety Justin Chang
Despite abundant talent on both sides of the camera and a bevy of eye-catching supernatural beasties, this f/x-heavy story of a literature-loving father and daughter battling dark forces unleashed from the pages of a rare tome doesn't conjure much in the way of bigscreen magic.
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50
Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Most of the time it looks like we're on the back lot for a Romanian production of "Lord of the Rings IV."
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50
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Not realizing that Inkheart is based on a famous fantasy novel, I had the foolish hope the movie might be about books. No luck. Wait till you hear what it's about.
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50
Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell
The actors are mostly charming; Bettany in particular is broody and cool.
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50
Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Graced with so many fanciful touches and features such a marvelous assortment of U.K. and American actors that it seems almost unjust that the final product is so curiously lacking in magic.
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50
Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
The movie begins to seem a little overloaded and gimmicky once characters from children's classics begin turning up (including Toto from The Wizard of Oz), but it's handsomely mounted.
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50
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
You know a movie's not working when you see minotaurs, flying monkeys, "The Wizard of Oz's" Toto and Helen Mirren riding a unicorn -- all on the screen at the same time -- and you're still waiting for the thing to be over so you can go home and get on with your life.
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40
The New York Times A.O. Scott
Aims for a blend of whimsy and tingly suspense but botches nearly every spell it tries to cast.
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40
Los Angeles Times Sheri Linden
With no unifying sensibility, the magic thuds more often than it soars.
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40
The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
Inkheart goes crazy with fairy tale characters popping in and out, all sorts of fantastical creatures materializing and so many rescues one loses count. Yet the movie fails to involve the key constituent: the audience.
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40
Village Voice Nick Pinkerton
It all smacks of that overdone "passion for literature" common in English teachers who send any healthy-minded kid running from books.
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30
Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Not since the thunderous digital onslaughts of "Jumanji" has the big screen seen such too-muchness.
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25
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Seemingly intended as a celebration of the power of books, it's an occasionally incoherent, sleep-inducing picture that reduces narrative to mere mechanics.
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20
New York Daily News Joe Neumaier
A kids' adventure movie can be a lot of things -- wild and woolly, loosey-goosey, full of foolishness -- but they should never be shabby. And that's the best word for Inkheart.
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What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 0.0 (out of 10) based on 0 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

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