plus some quirky Anglo-Saxon names should all add up magic. Movie star voices plus family dysfunction plus pixie dust and C.G.I. “The Spiderwick Chronicles” combines a lot of tried and true ingredients on the assumption that it’s following a foolproof recipe. Highmore nearly wears himself out trying to accomplish something like what Nicolas Cage did in “Adaptation” but to no clear purpose. Bolger), does a lot of yelling and stamping around before turning her wrath on the goblins. Highmore), is more conciliatory but also kind of wimpy, and their older sister, Mallory (Ms. Helen’s divorce causes particular tension between her and her son Jared (Mr. The human cast works very hard to juggle the expected responses of wonderment, panic and disbelief, and also to work through some domestic issues. “The Spiderwick Chronicles” is frantic with incident and hectic with computer-generated effects, including buckets of special Nickelodeon-style slime for the gooey green goblin blood. Joan Plowright also shows up briefly as a wise and witchy old lady who clears up a few mysteries and leaves a few more in her wake. But his malevolence is less scary than routine, as is the anxious twittering of Thimbletack, a honey-eating house spirit (voiced by Martin Short), and the jokey gregariousness of Hogsqueal, a porcine fellow with the voice of a suddenly overexposed Seth Rogen. Mulgarath takes many different forms, the most frightening of which is surely the person of Nick Nolte. That book, locked away in a secret room, is coveted by Mulgarath, commander of a bloodthirsty monster crew, who wants to use Spiderwick’s lore to wipe out all the cute little elves and fairies, and the children as well. It conjures a world of fanciful creatures some benign, others hostile and introduces into it a group of squabbling human siblings (played by Sarah Bolger and Freddie Highmore) who have moved into a spooky old house in the middle of nowhere, along with their newly divorced mother, Helen (Mary-Louise Parker).Ī previous resident of the house was one Arthur Spiderwick (David Strathairn), a scholar of the invisible world of sprites and goblins and the author of an encyclopedic reference book on their ways. Instead of the kind of inspired imaginative synergy that distinguished the “Lord of the Rings” and later “Harry Potter” pictures, this movie, directed by Mark Waters (“Mean Girls”), feels more like a sloppy, secondhand pander. “The Spiderwick Chronicles,” adapted from books by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, represents the latest such effort. Bookstore shelves are full of spells and sorcery, and so, these days, are multiplexes, as filmmakers take advantage of special-effects technology to bring literary enchantments to life. Every devoted reader of children’s literature knows that magic is difficult for the young wizards who practice it, of course, but even more so for their would-be creators, who must compete in an ever more crowded field.
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