An extremely well done and entertaining movie. When her husband dumps the family, mom and the three kids move back to daddy's old home. Aunt Lucinda, daddy's sister has been taken to a booby hatch because she sees fairy's so the house appears abandoned. Surprise! There is a brownie (Thimbletack) living in the house. He is there to protect a book written by Arthur Spiderwick before he disappeared many years ago. In this book Spiderwick has identified the unseen world. This book is sought by the king nasty fey Mulgarath. Nick Nolte has what is basically a cameo playing Mulgarath as an old man (he does the voice as well). He looks almost as bad here as in his mug shots. The CGI in this film is some of the best I have seen. When Thimbletack gets angry he transforms into another creature, the transformation is done seamlessly to my eye. He is brought back when given honey. The other excellent transformations are when Mulgarath shape shifts at different points in the movie. The fight scene between the sister and the unseen goblins is so well done. One of the twin brothers can see them using a special ring and calls out their positions to his sister using clock times. I can recommend this movie for the entire family it is just well done, funny, and serious.

First, I'm surprised that most negative reviews (<5 rating) are only from viewers that know the books (or at least one), cause the movie is not good for itself. IMHO one of the biggest mistakes are the characters of the kids. I don't know the book but I can't imagine the children were introduced like this in the original in terms of character development. Whiny, hateful, aggressive, etc... and NO, the breakup of their parents doesn't explain it at all. At least not at this intensity.After the first half-hour I was really like "meeeh, don't care what happens with them". Another thing that added to that was the bad acting (but the adults were not better at all). Maybe that's a subjective matter, but I know a lot of movies with child actors and even Freddie Highmore, had seen him playing better in other movies so maybe the reason is to find in the script or directing. Then the seemingly repetitive fighting, where they could had better invest some time in developing the characters, story or the world about the spiderwicks (I read in the commentaries there are five books, so source material shouldn't have been the problem). All in all, the beginning (about the book = 1P) and a few good new ideas here and there (another point) are the only reasons for me to give it 3/10 in the end.

The Spiderwick Chronicles is the film for kids who weren't quite old enough to see Pan's Labyrinth and are far too young to be able to remember Jumanji. To say that it falls in between the two films in terms of overall grade is not saying much, as many films done such a thing, but while this doesn't have the mature, sweeping majesty of del Toro's master work, it actually dares to be a bit more than the somewhat episodic demonstration of spooky special effects and meek character arcs that made up Joe Johnston's 1995 action/horror concept movie. In short, the film is actually rather enjoyable and I was surprised as to how it eventually congealed into this pretty decent adventure piece about magical worlds and differing, fictional creatures with their own set of characteristics and agendas all coming to interact with one another and our own world. There is a fun giddiness to proceedings, and while it doesn't quite crack the emotional marks of great magnitude for which it aims, there is a decent, solid adventure film in there with a genuine sense of terror and danger apparent.The film is about three child siblings who become mixed up in a plot to take over the world, a plot instigated by small, evil little creatures who're led by one rather large evil creature. This character is the film's strong antagonist, a shape-shifting ogre named Mulgarath, played by Nick Nolte – Nolte appears to be channeling David Bowie from 1986's "Labyrinth", although the beast itself looks a little too much like a de-masked Predator to be anything truly original or frightening. The children are Mallory, Simon and Jared Grace -with Sarah Bolger playing the eldest in Mallory and Freddie Highmore doubling up in playing both of her younger brothers. The deadly, threatening means by which these creatures think they're going to do this, however, is through that of......a book, and it is inside of their new home that this book is located. Their new home is actually a rather old one, one of those large; spooky looking houses from centuries ago which comes complete with a lone, circular window on its top storey. Around it lies woodland, and there is nary another soul for miles. Preceding this family of four moving in (not forgetting their mother, Helen!) was an odd scientist whose interests and experiments on animals and insects eighty years ago doubled up as the early findings on all that'll follow.So far, so Jumanji: the fatherless family unit with a young son, who does not speak; of whom are at logger-heads with one another in a social sense, thus need a lesson in teamwork, but of whom are then traversed off onto a scary adventure wherein they find an item in the attic (not a board game this time, a book) that carries with it the ability to induce the sort of horrors and impending doom only a special effects house could. It is some general messing around on a generally slow day that brings about the evils of this Macguffin, namely: invisible goblins who, in spite of their ability, mostly decide to hide in the long grass anyway. They are invisible, of course, so that the grown-ups won't be able to see them, while the film tries to eke out as much tension as possible from the initial exchanges by having the one sibling no one will believe/entrust, in Jared, initially stumble upon it. Poor Jared tries to tell his older sister about the threat of the impending doom and how he's started to see mythical creatures who have appeared from nowhere and started talking to him. Needless to say, it won't wash and it reminds us of the positive writings on a Japanese animation from the 1980s entitled "My Neighbour Totoro", when that particular film was praised for its subversion of such a limp tactic: its own infant characters found magical beasts only to rush and tell their parent, who actually believed them anyway and the film played out from there.When everyone is eventually in on it, the film gets some energy going and actually breaks out into a fairly involving; fairly gripping chase/adventure piece which has them dart all around the local town on top of a couple of other places few have ever before treaded. There is an amusing stop to the local psychiatric hospital, where their great aunt Lucinda (Plowright) is housed out of her stumbling upon similar plots and creatures when she was a kid. Back then, there wasn't anyone around to believe her, thus she ended up where she is but the whole episode reminded me of what befell Sarah Connor in the second Terminator film: a desperate attempt to inform everyone of a shocking reality, but no one around to actually chip in. Thus, it's off to the cells. One can only guess what her equivalent to the line: "Anybody not wearing two million sun-block is going to have a really bad day, get it!?" was when trying to get across to her doctors that the end is nigh.There's enough in The Spiderwick Chronicles to like; this alternate idea that magical worlds full of unreal things are dangerous and could cost you your life as opposed to being these fun, fluffy places wherein you'd quite like to lose yourself (alá the early Harry Potter films, et al.) is refreshing. Its core themes of team work and trust are as apparent here as they are in the Narnia films or anywhere else, while its imagery towards the end of the strong family unit working together as one blooded component to defend one's home is striking in a world of gay adoption and such. In spite of its lack of originality, the film is exciting and fleetingly quite frightening – a film those of a younger disposition will no doubt enjoy more than others, but that's not to say it is impossible to enjoy whatever your age.

THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES is a perfectly entertaining children's fantasy film that provides a neat alternative to those viewers who've overdosed on Harry Potter's antics. This one is a neat, standalone tale of mythical monsters and invisible beasties, and the three kids who have to fight them in an old, crumbling house in the remote countryside.The film provides plenty of action and lots of special effects (CGI, of course), which are for the most part very well achieved. There's humour (some of which, like the Seth Rogen character, I could have done without), scary scenes, and a great deal of imagination. It's all very familiar and rather predictable - in fact, I had virtually the same idea for a story like this, once - but there's little to dislike.Okay, so the script could have been a little tighter; there's a little too much yelling and shrillness early on, before the characters of the protagonists are given a chance to come out. The casting of Freddie Highmore in the dual role is very good, though, and something I didn't spot until about halfway through. Sarah Bolger, late of THE TUDORS, is excellent as ever. The director could have been better, but as I said, there's little to dislike in this one.