The Spiderwick Chronicles
The IMAX Experience
Directed by Mark Waters
Starring Freddie Highmore, Sarah Bolger, Mary-Louise Parker, Nick Nolte, Joan Plowright, David Strathairn, Seth Rogen, Martin Short
Rated PG
Release date: Feb. 14, 2008

I have to start off this review by confessing that I’m very conflicted over The Spiderwick Chronicles feature film, which I went to see on opening night in IMAX. My conflict is the reason why I wasn’t able to post this review sooner. While I can see what younger audiences would love about the film, I can’t help but scrutinize the obvious flaws.

Freddie Highmore plays a dual role as identical twins Jared and Simon Grace, who, along with their older sister Mallory (Sarah Bolger) and recently divorced mother Helen (Mary Louise Parker), move into a creepy old house on the Spiderwick Estate. Jared, angry and resentful over his parents’ breakup, is troublesome and difficult, unlike his twin, who’s level-headed and well-behaved. Jared takes his frustrations out by kicking and breaking things, so it’s no surprise that when bizarre occurrences begin to happen in the rickety home, the young boy gets all the blame.

One day, Jared finds a secret room in the house that contains a book called “Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastic World Around You.” Even though the book bares an ominous warning to NOT open it, the curious boy does so anyway. This awakens a surrounding unseen world of goblins, faeries, and other magical creatures ruled over by the evil ogre Mulgarath, who wants the book for himself. The children must find a way to guard their family against the ogre’s gruesome minions and prevent the book from being used for evil purposes.

I can tell you right away that The Spiderwick Chronicles is a fun family film that kids will absolutely love. That’s a given. The script, written by David Berenbaum, Karey Kirkpatrick, and John Sayles, definitely panders to the little ones, so much so that it easily alienates anyone over 10 years old with its predictability. This might have been acceptable if the five-part children’s book series by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi for which the film is based was the same way. But it’s not. While each book runs about 100 pages and is complete with illustrations, making it easy to breeze through the series, these are not storybooks but rather clever little finely crafted masterpieces that feed a child’s imagination.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers took great liberties with the storyline, basically dumbing it down, relying heavily on cliche fantasy elements and “American test-audience” resolutions. Perhaps I’m being over-analytical about it, but how many notches down does a children’s story need to be taken? It’s for children!!! It’s already brought down to their level, why insult their intelligence with mediocrity? This film is a classic example of how Hollywood takes quality source material and disregards it for no good reason (think of the botch job done to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). In the books, the children must use their individual attributes — Jared’s memorization of the Field Guide, Simon’s keen intellect, Mallory’s exceptional swordmanship — to combat the goblins and figure out how to get out of situations. But in the film, nearly every situation the children face and how they handle it is changed so that some outside force fixes everything for them. Resolution comes too easily.

And really, don’t even get me started on how Helen is a crappy mom who hides behind her children when faced with danger. Parker’s portrayal of Helen does nothing to endear the audience to this single mom who’s attempting to keep her children emotionally stable. Highmore, on the other hand, does a respectable job making the twins’ personalities distinct from one another and turning the irritable Jared into an upstanding hero.

The filmmakers really wanted this to be another Harry Potter franchise, which became quite obvious during a scene where the children ride a griffin. But Spiderwick is more like last year’s Bridge to Terabithia, with it’s mix of fantasy and real-life struggles, and is far from epic, especially with its 97-minute running time.

The IMAX element did enhance the viewing somewhat, though aside from that huge IMAX screen, I’m not sure there’s much difference is presentation. The special effects were a mixed bag. The goblins were your typical CGI creatures, lifeless and lacking personality, but with technology as it stands now, this is to be expected. Nick Nolte appears as the shapeshifting ogre Mulgarath and actually morphs into human form at one point, and I can easily say I wish he hadn’t. Not only was it entirely unnecessary, but it took you out of the fantasy realm and into the reality of Nolte’s typical disheveled appearance. Thankfully, the scenes in the faerie land were beautiful and exactly the kind of vibrant tone you’d expect a fantastical world to be.

Though I’m obviously disappointed is how the film was handled, I can’t say I hated it. It has its entertaining moments, and like I mentioned in the beginning, children will absolutely love this film. I’m hoping the DVD release includes a feature-length audio commentary and other behind-the-scenes featurettes, because I’d really like to know the reasoning behind a lot of the decisions. Sometimes, with enough justification, I can alter how I come at subsequent viewings of a movie and find it more enjoyable. I did manage to put my knowledge of the books aside while watching The Spiderwick Chronicles, so I actually did have a good time while at the theater. It was afterwards when I sat down to write this review that I started to really think about how so much of the plot was changed, and how poorly certain scenarios were handled. It’s unfortunate, because The Spiderwick Chronicles really could have been an epic adventure.