Under normal circumstances, I make a point of avoiding children's movies. Even if they might normally interest me (and they usually don't), I don't want to put up with watching them in a theater full of kids. I do make the occasional exception to this rule, though. Spiderwick Chronicles is one such exception. You see, I really like faeries. And not just girly, flowery faeries, or Tinkerbell. I collect and avidly read books on faerie lore, and I enjoy the work of artists like Brian Froud. Spiderwick Chronicles looked cool to me, because it clearly had some interesting faeries that were drawn from the traditional lore. Over all, I enjoyed the film. The story was fine, the acting was fine (although Freddy Highmore sounds weird doing an American accent), and the character design was pretty awesome. For good reason, as the Spiderwick books are the work of Holly Black, and illustrator-of-several-gaming-books Tony DiTerlizzi. One area that Spiderwick really succeeds in is presenting a "kids" story that has some actual action and peril. Face it. Looking back on your childhood, the movies you recall most fondly probably aren't the sanitized Disney cartoons. It's movies like Star Wars, Princess Bride, Dragonslayer... Movies that had family-friendly ratings, but also had battle and conflict and maybe the occasional moment that freaked you out when you were young. Spiderwick has all of this... sword fights, scary looking goblins, characters getting chased by monsters, bitten, caged... man, it's good stuff. Where Spiderwick fails a little, at least in my sight, is in presenting a weird mish-mash of traditional faerie lore and made-up lore. Some of the protections against faeries shown in the film are well-established folk beliefs. Others are cut from the whole cloth. And some are inspired by tradition, but re-interpreted in a weird way. Of course, I think some of these changes were made to appeal to the Nickelodeon crowd. The ability to see faeries granted by rubbing salve on your eyes? Boooring. That same ability being granted by having a hobgoblin spit in your eyes? Gross-out humor for the kiddies. Faeries being held at bay by sprigs of certain herbs? Booooring. Faeries being burned by tomato sauce? Lots of splatter-y fun! The important thing is that Spiderwick manages to make faeries interesting and cool, with some nice graphics to make it fun to watch. It's my hope that this movie will achieve a few things: get more kids interested in faerie lore, give today's generation a Labyrinth-like movie to watch over and over again like I did when I was a kid, and make a lot of money for an illustrator that I greatly respect.

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Copyright © 2008 By AJ Reardon E-mail AJ at: ErtheFae@aol.com Visit AJ at: www.erthefae.com