Metacritic: None | User Rating: 6.1 out of 10
Rotten Tomatoes: 39% out of 100 | 45% out of 100
Box Office | Domestic: $17 Million | Global: $45 Million | Totaling: $62 Million | Budget: $60 Million (estimated)
This film had a genuine concept it wanted to adapt for the big screen and than utterly failed to convert any audiences or actually tell a story, instead choosing the path of throw everything into the film and let the cutting room sort it out. For a film taking a large chunk of its premise straight from a variety of other magical concepts, books and popular culture, it was an exceptionally boring and poorly cast film. Let me rephrase the last statement. It had an excellent group of actors that were wasted on this film. There isn’t much to say about this movie outside that its own audience would yell at the screen “This isn’t Harry Potter!” and the parents would also likely scream with intent that this film is an insult to children and their imaginations. I imagine it was intended to keep 1-2 year olds occupied on a screen for large periods of time but it fails at doing that as well.
The premise for a children’s story that causes books to come to life when read should have been an instant box office hit. But combine a poorly adapted script, horribly overacted roles by veterans of stage and screen expecting to be in the next Harry Potter or Chronicles of Narnia and you get a couple of hours of awesomely bad scenes stitched together haphazardly with a lot of crazy visuals that all connect with no particular direction or storyline to speak of. A problem that is massively evident to the children this is aimed toward.
Personal Ranking: 1/2 ★ (God Awful)
Originally published October 28, 2014. Updated April 15, 2018.
