'The Spiderwick Chronicles: 2-Disc Field Guide Edition'

Hanh Nguyen
Zap2It.com

June 24 2008

Although "The Spiderwick Chronicles" is one of the many book-to-screen children's fantasy series capitalizing on the Harry Potter phenomenon, it doesn't play as a pale imitation of the franchise but instead is an enjoyable adventure on its own. The special 2-disc edition of the film is a fun addition to a home video library because of its clever packaging and numerous entertaining bonus features.

The Grace family -- mom Helen, twins Jared and Simon and older sister Mallory -- has just moved into the run-down Spiderwick Estate to start anew. When funny things start happening, troublemaker Jared is blamed, but for once he's not at fault. But since he did discover Arthur Spiderwick's dusty field guide to fantastical creatures, he's placed the family in danger from dark forces that would do anything to get its magical hands on that book.

DVD Bonus Features:

The Good: The packaging -- a burnished red with a velcro seal and attached note -- cleverly mimics Spiderwicks field guide as seen in the film. In the intro "It's All True!" and outro "A Final Word of Advice," director Mark Waters assures young viewers that everything -- the fairies, the boggarts, the Mulgarath -- is all real, but has to be re-created for the film. It's like perpetuating the Santa Claus myth, but also allowing for the demystifying behind-the-scenes featurettes, which are all nicely informative. Highlights include "It's a Spiderwick World," which follows the origins of the books by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi to adapting it for the screen, "Meet the Clan," which focuses on the actors and features Freddie Highmore's dual turn as the twins, in addition two featurettes on the production design and the post-production effects used to create the CG characters such as the griffin, Thimbletack the brownie and the lovably gross Hogsqueal. Use the "play all" function to play the short, but imaginative and original series of Nickelodeon TV spots advertising the movie.

The Bad: "Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide" is a very limited, digital version of the guide Jared reads. For each definition of a fantastical creature or concept, the full page with illustrations is provided, along with a link to a scene in the movie that depicts what's described. It's not a bad feature necessarily, but it's rather clunky (reading like a book) and is the same content used in the "Field Guide: In-Movie Mode" that interrupts the flow of action in the film when selected. The deleted scenes for the most part are useless, although one scene in which Jared is blamed for Thimbletack's destruction of the family kitchen emphasizes the bad twin's martyred status.