The Spiderwick Chronicles (PG) ★★★

The Spiderwick Chronicles hands us a new fantastical adventure to capture our imagination--and make us grab the edge of our seats. It's definitely not for the youngest faint of heart.

Story

It can't just ALL be about a boy wizard named Harry Potter. There have to be other fantasy-driven stories grounded in reality that are just as exciting. And so there is: The Spiderwick Chronicles, a series of short books by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, which tells us about the magical creatures who live around us but who remain invisible so we humans won't freak out. Probably a wise choice for most, but there are a few who want to see the creatures. One such person is Arthur Spiderwick (David Strathairn), a turn-of-the-century naturalist who has witnessed the likes of sprites, goblins, hobgoblins, ogres and trolls at work. He has documented their secrets and habits in his Field Guide--a book that, if placed in the wrong hands, could make some fantastical beast maliciously omnipotent. Jump ahead some 80 years, when we meet Spiderwick's descendents, the Grace family, who have moved into his dilapidated house in the woods. Newly divorced mom Helen (Mary-Louise Parker) has uprooted her kids--teenage Mallory (Sarah Bolger) and twins Jared and Simon (both Freddie Highmore)--to start a new life, with Jared being the one protesting the loudest. That is, until he finds Spiderwick's field guide and quite literally opens Pandora's box, giving evil ogre Mulgarath (Nick Nolte), who has desperately wanted the book since its inception, the window of opportunity he's been waiting for. The Grace kids have to band together--with a few otherworldly allies, of course--to protect the book, at all costs.

Acting

Although Highmore (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) struggles at times with the American accent, the young British lad continues to prove his worthiness in the acting department--and joins the ranks of playing twins onscreen that dates back to Patty Duke on The Patty Duke Show (yes, they were just cousins, but they were identical cousins). Highmore does a nice job distinguishing between the two boys, but he seems to have the most fun playing Jared. And rightly so, since Jared is the true hero of the story. He is deeply wounded by his parents' divorce, blaming his mother for it all, but in discovering this magical and dangerous world that goes way beyond his personal problems, he quickly snaps to it. Bolger (In America), too, takes her clichéd, older-sister-who-knows-everything role and freshens it up, adding a fierce determination to protect her family--with an expressive face that makes her very watchable. The adult cast isn't nearly as important, but they all fit in nicely, especially Joan Plowright as Great Aunt Lucinda, Spiderwick's 80-something daughter who saw her father taken away by sylphs, the keepers of the faeries' secrets, when she was 6 and has been trying to explain it ever since. Then there are the voices of some of the creatures the Graces meet, including Martin Short as the ever-faithful house brownie, Thimbletack; Seth Rogen as the hobgoblin Hogsqueal, a piggish and friendly fellow whose spit in the eye gives you the Sight; and Nolte as the horrible villainous Mulgarath.

Direction

OK, all those who believe in faeries, raise your hand! The Spiderwick Chronicles is just the kind of story that gets an imaginative kid to run out to the garden to start looking for sprites, and director Mark Waters inherently understands this. Better known for his comedies such as Mean Girls and Freaky Friday, Waters nonetheless grabs hold of the Spiderwick's mythology and firmly plants it in reality, with normal, modern kids encountering a whole magical realm. Taking from the illustrations of co-author Tony DiTerlizzi, Waters also gives us new versions of magical creatures we've read about for ages. Goblins, for example, look like giant frogs and act like attack dogs in this film, as opposed to the more civilized view of them in the Harry Potter books--and goblins in Spiderwick can be killed by tomato sauce, which melts them. Nice touch. Trolls, too, aren't great big lumbering fellows but more dinosaur-like in Spiderwick. And let's just say ogre Mulgarath looks nothing like Shrek, but more so a devilish creature with yellow eyes and great big horns. Spiderwick is indeed scary at times, maybe too scary for the younger kids, but the action sequences and chase scenes are thrilling enough to keep everyone else's attention.

Bottom Line

Hollywood.com rated this film 3 stars.