Spiderwick

Spiderwick is yet another kiddy-fantasy movie adapted from a children's book. Oh no? Oh yes! The trailers were showing everywhere since last year and it looked so promising I was itching to watch it! No regrets! It was definitely not your usual Narnia (plastic kids), The Golden Compass (only the CGI characters were lovable), or Harry Potter (argh stop it already) as the significant difference with those and this was that in Spiderwick, the kids COULD actually ACT! Sigh, it's lame that the ability to act doesn't seem to be a requirement to star in a movie anymore these days.

I especially liked the protagonist - Freddie Highmore (one might remember him in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) who takes on a dual role as a pair of TWINS and I loved BOTH his characters. He does sorta reminds me of Haley Joel Osment in his younger years circa 1999 in The Sixth Sense - except Freddie is more English, better at being emo, and a bit more cuter haha! David Strathairn played his role as Arthur Spiderwick so perfectly I wished he was MY granduncle! And the CGI! Oh the CGI were so pretty! There were critics bitching that the movie relied on too much CGI but that's not being really fair. In this century of King Kong and LOTR, is there really any other way to showcase goblins, trolls, ogres, sprites and the other twin so realistically without spending too much time and money? Paper and wire works? Clay and stop motion? Electronic puppets? Yeah right STFU let's see you make your own fantasy movie without CGIs, morons.

I can't quite comment at how true it is to the book but apparently it's a mishmash of the entire series of five but completely left out book four. Thanks Wikipedia! But from someone who never read the book before the plot of the movie was very straightforward and the story-telling was fluid, very unlike a certain jumpy and disjointed installment of a certain wizardboy movie which even managed to confuse its own avid/rabid fanboi readers.

The movie can be a tad bit scary at parts for chicken hearted kids (like me; I had to close my eyes a bit and peek out of my hands hehe), but it's no where as creepy, terrifying and adult-oriented as Pan's Labyrinth (which was a pretty darn good movie in its own right but why was it marketed as a kiddy movie here? Sure it's a kiddy movie if you don't want them kids to sleep alone in the dark for the REST OF THEIR LIVES).

Overall it's a thoroughly enjoyable kiddy movie!

My first good movie of the year and it definitely rips Be Kind, Rewind into shreds.

Thanks for the tickets Eyeris! :)