Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies present The Spiderwick Chronicles. Mark Waters directs this family-scare picture. The stars include Freddie Highmore playing two roles, Mary-Louise Parker, Sarah Bolger, Nick Nolte, David Strathairn, and Joan Plowright. The film also includes the voice talents of Seth Rogen and Martin Short. Chronicles runs 97 minutes and is MPAA rated PG*.
A mother, her daughter, and her twin sons move into an old family-owned house after separating from her husband. This dirty, spooky old house in the country is their only real option after the separation. There are bumps in the night and soon one of the boys discovers the secrets of the old house and his Grandfather, Arthur Spiderwick.
This is a well-filmed, well-edited and well-acted picture. It’s a solid story, given the ability to suspend disbelief and accept an unseen world of nice and not-so-nice creatures. There are some unexplained portions of the story, but they don’t really distract from the main plotline. The special effects placing Freddie Highmore into the scenes as two different boys are flawless. Generally the scares are pretty lightweight, but the * by the PG rating above is there for one particularly graphic moment that I'll talk a bit more about below.
This movie was a lot of fun. It had some small scares for me and more for the large collection of under-ten members of the audience that shared the screening with me. The crowd with me seemed to take the graphic moment mentioned above in stride. That either means that kids today are already desensitized -or- the storytelling was clear enough for them so that they understood what was going on and that what we see is not real. I hope that the later is the case.
Besides the scares, there are some real Nick moments - like creature spit that, while disgusting, has magical effects and the wide range splattering of tomato sauce. There are also very magical moments filled with imagination and beauty. I would recommend this film for most families - it needs a little post-viewing talk about reality and the movies and how very real the danger of a kitchen knife is, but it is fun and it is something that touches on reality as well as fantasy. Take your family and use the story as an age-appropriate launching pad to talk about some grown-up topics.