RATING: B+
This film might be one of the more improbable successes of the past decade or so, if you think about it. Sure, it didn't get a whole lot of money or attention when it was released; it wasn't that kind of success. The success here is it actually being good. And really, this movie should never have worked. This is adapted from a series of five rather short children's books. And it's all squashed into one movie with no intention for a sequel that's barely 100 minutes. With that much possible material being squashed into that relatively short of a movie, it's a wonder this movie did not turn out incomprehensible and sloppy.
This came out during the age when movie adaptions of children/young adult fantasy novels/series were all the rage; we hadn't quite hit the young adult dystopia trilogy phase yet. This particular one involves a fantasy world in which the actual fantasy world is actually right there in the real world with us--just invisible to the eye. Unless you get the veil lifted, that is. Then you come across a world of fairies, "brownies/boggarts," goblins, and one ugly shapeshifting ogre. Some guy named Arthur Spiderwick uncovered all this information (somehow), and stuffed it all into one "field guide"--which his descendants Jared, Simon and Mallory discover eighty years after his disappearance. And of course, the not-so-nice creatures of this unseen world--namely the previously mentioned shapeshifting ogre--want this "field guide" for themselves for nefarious purposes.
So how exactly do you squash five books (short ones; about 150 pages each, if memory serves) worth of mythology into one movie? Well, obviously you don't include everything. It's been a *long* time since I read the books, and I only did so once. But I do recall that there are plenty of creatures that get left out entirely. And in a sense, the whole plotline of the books is somewhat changed. In other words, if you're actually a fan of these books and are hoping for a faithful adaption... well, good luck.
Surprisingly, what we get is actually pretty good. Things are explained surprisingly concisely and there doesn't end up being a whole lot of confusion. The plot itself is pretty exciting; there's plenty of pretty exciting fantasy action scenes. The sibling rivalry between Jared and Mallory is rather annoying at first; and it makes no sense how the former gets blamed for some of the early chaos when that is straight up impossible. But that's really the biggest gripe here. The CGI is sometimes a little obvious, but other times it's quite good. There's a pretty decent cast; Freddie Highmore does impressively considering he plays both Jared *and* Simon (who are twins). Mary Louise-Parker doesn't get to do much, but David Straithairn fares better. There's some good voice casting too, with Seth Rogen and Nick Nolte--the latter being well-cast for the ogre Mulgarath. There's also a surprisingly touching ending thrown on that definitely wasn't in the books.
As previously mentioned, this movie really should not have worked. Combining five short books into one movie is a recipe for disaster; a lesson they probably should've learned from the film adaption of Series of Unfortunate Events. But this one actually really works. It's an exciting film that blends modern fantasy tropes with hints of elements from such films of years past (ex: some of the goblin scenes might bring to mind Gremlins). Credit to director Mark Waters for being able to pull that off, especially considering that basically the rest of his entire filmography is more comedy oriented rather than fantasy or even just action. Spiderwick Chronicles is certainly no classic, but given what it had to do in a short amount of time, it's a pretty impressive piece of work.
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