Spiderwick Chronicles Review - Topic Powered by eve community

The Spiderwick Chronicles
Paramount/Nickelodeon
PG 97 min

So the kids are home and you’re looking for a movie at which to drop them off while you, well, whatever you do while the kids are occupied.
Well then it doesn’t really matter which one you choose but may I say that if, just if, you plan on sitting through the feature THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES isn’t a bad selection.
I started off a bit leery since Nickelodeon is the co distributor. Not that I have a gripe with Nickelodeon but they aren’t exactly Disney. I don’t want to see any kids covered in green goop as it were.
To be honest for the first portion of the film I was pretty unimpressed. As far as it went, it looked pretty much like a hundred other cookie cutter B list fantasies. Separated mom and kids move into an old spooky looking house. Kids miss their dad and hate the new place. Three kids include a skeptical older brother, an embittered and impressionable younger brother and a pain in the butt teen sister.
Little bro, of course, stumbles upon a hidden entry into a secret place and finds a magical book left there by the great great great uncle Spiderwick. (David Strathairn)
It’s no big surprise that the kids will, one by one, come to believe and they will all take on a great adventure. Got it?
Well so far the effects are mediocre by today’s standards, the kids average and the plot predictable.
Well then the magic begins. Little by little things got better. When the first little sprite appears how real the little bugger looked impressed me. OK, says I, FX aren’t that big a deal these days.
But then as the kids set out on the adventure more and more computer generated goblins fairies and the like, all cleverly rendered, became part of the story, and as the story took a bit more shape I became a little more interested. If the mean ogre gets hold of the secret book he’ll kill everybody. OK it ain’t the LORD OF THE RINGS, but it’s exciting enough for kids. Well, OK, me too.
So now the Steve O Meter has gone from C- to C+.
A few above average action scenes and a particularly cool hog goblin move it to a B-.
By the time the touching ending rolled around I was happily giving a B.
I won’t blow that ending; it isn’t even earth shaking, but it was a pleasant way to wrap up loose ends and I was more than a little choked up.
Don’t tell anybody.
B

WSS
westsidesteve@aol.com

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The show doesn't get any better.
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Posts: 5270 | Location: Norton Ohio USA | Registered: Mon September 15 2003

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