{"id":10898,"date":"2008-09-07T04:47:13","date_gmt":"2008-09-07T08:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=10898"},"modified":"2008-09-07T04:47:13","modified_gmt":"2008-09-07T08:47:13","slug":"the-spiderwick-chronicles-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/07\/the-spiderwick-chronicles-2008\/","title":{"rendered":"The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"14spid600\"<\/a>I miss movies like these, fantastic fantasy films that influenced reading without giving us a PSA or shoving religion down our throats. I miss films like \u201cNeverending Story\u201d or \u201cDark Crystal\u201d that explored a whole world beyond ours without watering down a story. \u201cThe Spiderwick Chronicles\u201d is that throwback to the classic fantasy kids films with violence, suggestive language, and edgy action that kept the line between kids film and teen film very very thin. Surprisingly mixed in reviews upon its release, I am saddened that Mark Waters\u2019 family fantasy flick wasn\u2019t more universally embraced as it should have been.<\/p>\n

Because I had a blast from beginning to end; though I\u2019ve never read the books, the deviation from the source material is almost excellent with a great story that takes three tweens in to a world within their world where an evil all powerful ogre is hoping to grab the Spiderwick Field Guide, a comprehensive encyclopedia of the creatures outside their mansion, and rule the world with its information. Filled with a cast of respective heavyweights like David Strathairn, Nick Nolte, Freddy Highmore and Mary Louis Parker, to name a few, \u201cThe Spiderwick Chronicles\u201d is a simple but epic adventure where a simple book leads to a massive quest to save the magical world which will in turn save our world and through that director Waters brings us a story with obviously paralleling storylines about parental abandonment while always delivering such themes with subtlety which is what modern fantasy films have lacked.<\/p>\n

We all knew \u201cThe Bridge to Terabithia\u201d was about religion and a God, and we all knew \u201cThe Last Mimzy\u201d was about mysticism and Buddhism, but most of \u201cSpiderwick\u2019s\u201d themes are left on the back burner to develop as the story progresses and this gives time for us to care about the characters and become engrossed in the surprise climactic development involving our demented villain\u2019s parlor games. Most of the action and creature effects may frighten some children, but it\u2019s that consistent edge that\u2019s been missing from most fantasy flicks where our heroes actually hurt our villains regardless of how intense it may seem to some viewers. And thanks to some top notch choreography, we\u2019re left with some dazzling action sequences particularly when heroine Mallory is attacked by the goblins and left to fend for herself with her sword.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a wonderful sequence that brings a hint of swashbuckling whimsy to the proceedings. Waters continues on a healthy trend of involving characterization and top notch performances, along with a classic \u201cStraw Dogs\u201d climax where our hopelessly outnumbered heroes are left with their wits and weapons against monsters at their doorsteps. It\u2019s a risqu\u00e9 dose of interspecies war that really hints at something bigger beyond Mulgarath. We just don\u2019t get good children\u2019s entertainment like this anymore and there isn\u2019t enough I can say about \u201cThe Spiderwick Chronicles\u201d beyond the simple declaration that it\u2019s probably one of my favorites of 2008, and while there are many other contenders at the gate, I think it will make the grain. Though the second half is anti-climactic, the first half more than makes up for the shortcomings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I miss movies like these, fantastic fantasy films that influenced reading without giving us a PSA or shoving religion down our throats. I miss films like \u201cNeverending Story\u201d or \u201cDark Crystal\u201d that explored a whole world beyond ours without watering down a story. \u201cThe Spiderwick Chronicles\u201d is that throwback to the classic fantasy kids films […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[58,64,71,276,340,349,580,678,885],"class_list":["post-10898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-action","tag-adaptation","tag-adventure","tag-demons","tag-family","tag-fantasy","tag-kids","tag-monsters","tag-s"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}