The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008) – on rental. The Spiderwick Chronicles was the second of a pair of modern fantasy-esque films that we caught over a weekend ago. And if Pan’s Labyrinth was unconventionally for adults, Spiderwick is its traditional equivalent and falls nicely smack within the ‘appropriate for minors’ lot.
The film is based on a series of popular children books about a world of faeries that exist together with our earthly realm. Unlike Narnia and Pan’s Labyrinth though, there is no portal that bring visitors to and fro between the two realms. The faerie realm in Spiderwick exists right alongside ours: you just don’t see the faeries unless you either wear a special eye-piece, or you get a hobgoblin to spit into your eyes – no kidding.
The story concerns a book written by Arthur Spiderwick (David Strathairn). He first discovers the fantastic realm in the early 19th century, and proceeds to pen every bit of knowledge he learns about the realm. It’s flora and fauna, creatures, wards, spells and the like. This tome however is also high risk – as it contains the vulnerabilities of the realm’s denizens. When efforts to safeguard the book get accidentally upset by Spiderwick’s descendants in modern times, possession of the book and its secrets become a jostling match between the Spiderwick children and the evil ogre Mulgarath and his minions.
Aside from Mary-Louise Parker who plays the distressed mother of the three Spiderwick children, David Strathairn, and Nick Nolte who voices Mulgarath, the cast in this film are all unknown to me. The Spiderwick children are given mutually antagonistic traits towards each other: the two younger twins Jared and Simon comprise one who’s rebellious and another who’s bookishly passive, and their older sister Mallory who’s initially skeptical about believing in the alternate realm. This type of antagonism is not something you haven’t seen already before, but to the young actors’ credit, they don’t ham it up or display too obviously the irritating acting traits that you often find in children-driven films (*koff* the first Narnia film).
The fantastic realm is also given some personality and relatively unique elements: like the aforementioned Hobgoblin spit thing, or that the same Hobgoblin loves eating birds (be assured that the bird eating scenes are handled in kid-friendly fashion), or that faeries are allergic to pasta sauce. There’s also no mistaking the CG work in the animation and rendition of these creatures and landscapes. The most amazing use of digital artistry though lies not there but in the twins. The two appear in so many scenes together that I was shocked at the film’s end to see in its credits that both twins were portrayed by the same actor Freddie Highmore. It’s that seamless, and stunningly impressive digital work.
On the overall, The Spiderwick Chronicles is pleasant dinner accompaniment and unlike Pan’s Labyrinth, I don’t think it upset Ling too much. There’s no gore, not very dark, has a reasonably interesting setting, and is safe enough for minor audiences.
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