Review of The Secret of Moonacre (2009) by Benjamin M — 14 Jan 2010

Having enjoyed Gabor Csupo's previous film Bridge to Terabithia, and being quite a fan of the Narnian tales, I decided to watch Moonacre believing that I would get a glimpse of some sort of crossover of the two worlds. What I got instead was a rather simplified fairytale, mostly for a younger audience.

The story, which I will not sum up, was very basic and consequntly character development suffered from that. The promising mystery of the book and of the rather cold but intriguing uncle is cast away pretty quickly and we are left with a tale of two families who don't really llike each other due to some precious hidden pearls. The lead charactr, a little girl, for some strange reason realises that the book and her present environment are linked. And for an even stranger reason knows that she is the moon princess. Cheesy. Overall it doesn't glue together, but as I said the film is for children.

Visually, besides a tiny bit of CGI and a few glossy image sequences, moonacre has nothing new to offer or compensate for such an under-developed story. Additionally the cast, despite being composed of Brit actors Ioan Gruffudd, Natasha McElhone and Tim Curry, were not given much to do or any much freedom to enhance their performances.

Along with the use of white and black and its suggested emptiness, the film lacked anything noteworthy or of any remote interest. Watch the trailer and imagine what a good film it could have been rather than see the full version.