Book-based family fantasy is magical and fun.
Comment
02/14/08
The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008)
79
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:138
Fresh:109
Rotten:29
Average Rating:6.7/10
Consensus: The Spiderwick Chronicles is an entertaining children's adventure, with heart and imagination to spare.
Theatrical Release:21-03-2008
Synopsis: Based on the bestselling series of children's fantasy novels of the same name by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi, THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES follows the adventures of the Grace family, newly... [More]
Starring: Freddie Highmore, Mary-Louise Parker, Nick Nolte, Joan Plowright
Director: Mark Waters
Reviews for The Spiderwick Chronicles
Sloppy, secondhand pander.
02/14/08
Top CriticThe characters lack shadings -- Nolte's ogre is loud but uninteresting -- and the tone of the fantasy world isn't witty, like Harry Potter's, or satirical, like Lemony Snicket's. It's all just silly.
02/14/08
Happily, Highmore has no trouble grasping the task at hand. As both the thoughtful Simon and the brash Jared, he transports himself into this literal faerie tale with such convincing enthusiasm, he turns us into believers, too.
02/14/08
The story generates surprising emotional power.
02/14/08
A swiftly told and sturdily built speculative story.
02/14/08
I kept wishing for another scene with Mulgarath in the form of Nolte, because, well, you can never have enough Nolte, and because his particular brand of kinetic insanity would have been just what the movie needed to shake up its clockwork smoothness.
02/14/08
Top CriticSpiderwick Chronicles, thanks to its fine craftsmanship, is very much more than the same old bedtime stories, digitally gussied up for profit if not fun.
02/14/08
As a swashbuckler for youngsters it's colorful, diverting and, every now and then, genuinely magical.
02/14/08
The effects, the pacing, the mood and the stunningly professional job the ubiquitous child actor Freddie Highmore does playing utterly different twins are enough to make you forget about what's not there.
02/14/08
It has plentiful whimsy, a big enough heart and Joan Plowright in one fine scene, burbling magnificently. It treats its archetypes with all due seriousness: Good must engage evil in a final stand. And fatherless children must try to save the world.
02/14/08
Passably entertaining if derivative.
02/14/08
This adventure of preteens encountering a mythical realm lacks the scope of the other entries in the Harry Potter sweepstakes, but it still manages to provide scares and action for the under-12 set.
02/14/08
Fans of the books will be pleased with the film version, which is equally as action packed and fast paced. It's doubtful they will begrudge the story changes.
02/14/08
It's a movie I can imagine kids actually liking, as opposed to one that clueless studio executives merely want them to like.
02/14/08
It's got thrills but is not allegorically deep or daunting like the Harry Potter or Narnia flicks. It skews young.
02/14/08
Part of what keeps this from being just another children's fantasy is director Mark Waters' sensitivity to the way the enchanted elements deepen the emotional journey.
02/14/08
It isn't quite the world of the books. But it's a perfectly magical and exciting one in its own right.
02/14/08
In its way, The Spiderwick Chronicles is a ripsnorting, computerized update of E. Nesbit's old fantasy novels for children.
02/14/08
Fatherless children are the order of the day, but the film develops this theme no more than the absolute minimum, instead content to stage swordfights and races-against-time between its plucky child protagonists and their monstrous enemies.
02/14/08
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