Inkheart

This evening we watched Inkheart, the first of the many films we have to get through this year. It's apparently not especially faithful to the novel, and the special effects are often rather off, unless it was purely intentional for every landscape to appear to be green screened into place.

Also, perhaps it's a little odd that every single motor vehicle seems to be a Citreon. Were they sponsoring the film? Or is the whole of Switzerland chock-full of French cars?

Something Switzerland is chock-full of is British comedy actors, and it becomes a bit distracting when him-off-the-Fast-Show/Super Hans from Peep Show/some random bloke so ugly he has to be a British comedian wanders into frame. But I suppose there's a certain consistency to their accents.

Helen Mirren, Jim Broadbent and even to some extent Jamie Foreman seem rather wasted in this, and given the third of them seems best known for playing a shouty yob in Layer Cake, that's another bad sign. Brandon Fraser from The Mummy sleepwalks through the heroic role, Andy Serkis pretends to be Keith Allen ... What was this all about again?

Maybe they left the plot around somewhere. It's a shame: the first ten minutes are promising, but the rest is a formlesss mess, with missed opportunities, weak structure, and a pointless wrap-up in the closing minutes (possibly designed to prevent a sequel?) so I can't say it was worth climbing 200 steps to watch. Never mind, there's something else on tomorrow.