Inkheart

The idea here is that there are certain people, silvertongues, who when reading a book aloud cause the characters and/or events to cross over into our world. It’s an interesting idea, and some of this movie is good, but it ends up with all too much special-effects hugger-mugger, too many things happening at once. I have to say that the locations are ravishing, though.

When I encounter a magical conceit like this, I am always curious about the rules that apply. Sometimes rules are established and then blithely thrown away, and I hate that. In this movie, I didn’t think I was told enough to know if rules were being violated. So I wondered, for instance, if father and daughter Mo and Meggie, both silvertongues, could read, say, a newspaper aloud and have the subjects of the story appear before them. A phone book? If they sang an aria from an opera, would people appear who sang all their dialogue? And most important in this day and age when I get a letter every week asking when some of my stories will appear as ebooks … would it work on a Kindle?