Brendan Frasier stars as Mo Folchart, a Silvertongue who has the ability to bring out characters from books whenever he reads it out loud.  Years ago he lost his wife (Sienna Guillory) while reading Inkheart to his daughter Meggie (Eliza Bennett).  Since then he’s been looking for a copy of the book in the hopes of bringing his wife back to the real world.

Maybe it’s a good thing that I haven’t read the book yet.  I didn’t have any expectations with regards to this movie.  Brendan Frasier takes another poke at the hero role and is decent at it.  Being a Paul Bettany fan, I’m glad to see him play Dustfinger the fire-eater.  His performance is brilliant.  Then there’s Andy Serkis who plays the main villain Capricorn.  It’s nice to see the face behind the voice of Gollum.

But someone who surprised me the most is the youngest member of the cast, Eliza Bennett.  Her acting is excellent. Plus, she sang the song that played during the end credits, video of which can be viewed below.

It turns out Meggie is also a Silvertongue and Capricorn captured her and forced her to bring the Shadow to the real world.  Then Meggie showed that the pen is mightier than the Shadow when she began making up a story and read it out loud, in the process eliminating Capricorn, Shadow and the rest of the bad guys from Inkheart.

Elinor Loredan (Helen Mirren):  Yes, a hundred times.  Along with St. Petersburg, Paris, Middle-Earth, distant planets and Shangri-la.  And I never had to leave this room.  Books are adventure.  They contain murder and mayhem and passion.  They love anyone who opens them.

Inkheart is feel-good, entertaining movie for the whole family.  It teaches kids that reading can be enjoyable.  Books are my friends and I love every moment I spent with them.  But these days I have no time for them anymore but I promise to make some reading time in the near future.