MPAA Rating: PG, for fantasy adventure action, some scary moments and brief language
Genre: Fantasy/Adventure/Family
Age range: Ages 8 and up
Runtime: TBD
Starring: Brendan Fraser, Paul Bettany, Helen Mirren, Jim Broadbent, Andy Serkis, Eliza Hope Bennett, Rafi Gavron, Sienna Guillory
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures/New Line Cinema
Director: Iain Softley
Release Date: January 23, 2009
Inkheart Movie Trailer
Inkheart - Official Synopsis
Based on the best-selling book by Cornelia Funke, Inkheart is a fantasy adventure that sends a father and daughter on a quest through worlds both real and imagined.
Mortimer "Mo" Folchart (Brendan Fraser) and his 12-year-old daughter, Meggie (Eliza Hope Bennett), share a passion for books. What they also share is an extraordinary gift for bringing characters from books to life when they read aloud. But there is a danger: when a character is brought to life from a book, a real person disappears into its pages.
On one of their trips to a secondhand book shop, Mo hears voices he hasn't heard for years, and when he locates the book they're coming from, it sends a shiver up his spine. It's Inkheart, a book filled with illustrations of medieval castles and strange creatures--a book he's been searching for since Meggie was three years old, when her mother, Resa (Sienna Guillory), vanished into its mystical world.
But Mo's plan to use the book to find and rescue Resa is thwarted when Capricorn (Andy Serkis), the evil villain of Inkheart, kidnaps Meggie and, discovering she has inherited her father's gift, demands that she bring his most powerful ally to life--the Shadow. Determined to rescue his daughter and send the fictional characters back where they belong, Mo assembles a small group of friends and family--some from the real world, some from the pages of books--and embarks on a daring and perilous journey to set things right.
Inkheart - Fun Facts for Families
Inkheart, the book upon which the movie is based, is a children's book of 500+ pages! Recommended for kids ages 9-15, the tale is a richly detailed story within a story. The book offers a great challenge and an opportunity to introduce older kids to a series which might pique their interest and entice them to read the two sequels, Inkspell and Inkdeath (parents may want to pre-read the books, however, as there is some content that may be too much for some kids, even if they are within the recommended age ranges).
*If Inkheart seems to mature for your kids, here are some other movies based on books that are fun for kids to watch after reading the original either individually or as a family.