Discombobulating experience in the vein of The Neverending Story and The Princess Bride, a defense of books framed in the form of an ugly movie. Is the ugliness deliberate? Designed to send a repulsed viewer to the placid regularity of the printed page? The postulate here has to do with a rare breed of Silver Tongues, people who, by reading aloud, bring books to life: special emphasis, therefore, on the extent to which authors control, or lose control of, their characters. The fictitious miscreants who’ve been let loose in the real world keep threatening to kill, but it’s never established (this being strictly a children’s movie) that they have that capacity. The climactic materialization of a smoke monster called The Shadow is most welcome. And Jennifer Connelly, merely glimpsed a couple of times as a character still trapped in the book, would have been welcome, too, but she doesn’t even come up to the standards of a cameo. Maybe on the editing-room floor. Brendan Fraser, Eliza Bennett, Paul Bettany, Helen Mirren, Jim Broadbent, Sienna Guillory, Andy Serkis; directed by Iain Softley. (2009) — Duncan Shepherd
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