The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008)

 

Of course it made sense that after the explosive success of the Harry Potter-films, studios everywhere would jump on the bandwagon in search of that sweet, sweet moneymaking franchise. We got the lacklustre adaptation of 'The Golden Compass', the totally wrongly marketed 'Bridge to Terabithia' and Nickelodeon gave us this one. It is capably made and a decent enough kids' film, but on the whole, this is still rather boring, stale and has one of the most unlikable main characters in a long time. 

It also doesn't really give a shit about the characters. Nice effects, though. 

The Grave family (mom, daughter Mallory and twins Jared and simon) move into an old house left to them by their 'crazy' aunt Lucinda in the middle of nowhere. Right off the bat, Jared hates it. He is also the main reason why this film fails, as he is incredibly irritating in every respect. 

Seriously: the entire film you want to slap him in the face. He does stupid things, lies, talks back when he should be quiet... Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

Jared discovers a book, compiled by Arthur Spiderwick. This contains a ton of information on faery folk. For some reason, an ogre named Mulgarath wants this book so he can kill every faery and human alike and rule... nothing, I guess? The brownie in the house - Thimbletack - was supposed to guard the book, but Jared stupidly opens it and reads it, thus alerting the ogre and goblins to its whereabouts. 

Nice going, little shit.

Due to some incredibly contrived instances, it turns out most people can't see the faeries. They can see them through a stone with a hole in it, or when hobgoblin Hogsqueal spits in their eyes. Okay, fair enough. But when they decide to ask aunt Lucinda for help, Jared doesn't leave the book safely in the house but takes it with him for no reason, yet again. 

Seriously, by this point you want Mulgarath to win. 

It all comes to a massive fight (well, its buildup is massive, the fight itself is a bit of a letdown) where most of the goblins are killed with tomatosauce (yes, really), it's one final showdown with Mulgarath that ends in a very silly fashion that you could see coming ever since they introduced Hogsqueal.

Kids might like this one, even if it takes quite a while to gather some steam. But only little kids, as most above the age of 10 will notice that the hero is an absolute wanker. It's not Freddie Highmore's fault, as he pulls off playing twins nicely and twin brother Simon is much nicer, but Jared is written so poorly and makes such awful choices it is rather hard to root for him. Even his 'redemption' near the end doesn't do much to endear us to him. Joan Plowright is great as aunt Lucinda, though. 

Casting of the creatures is a lot better and they are probably the best part of this film. Martin Short is a lot of fun as Thimbletack and Seth Rogen does his usual schtick as Hogsqueal. But maybe the best casting comes from getting Nick Nolte to play Mulgarath. Fair enough, he only appears as himself in a very short scene, the rest is voice acting, but that gruff bark fits the character very well. Ron Perlman is uncredited as goblin leader Redcap, but he does it with gusto. 

As for everything else, well... It's incredibly predictable and for some reason, I kept expecting more from this film. They could have done a lot more with the story and the inclusion of the griffin and the world of the sylphs feels tacked on to pad the runtime and to find some form of deus ex machina. But in the end, it is a by-the-numbers product that doesn't hold any lasting impressions.