The Secret of Moonacre Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

The Secret of Moonacre Blu-ray Movie Review

Can you keep a secret? You've seen this movie before.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 21, 2010

Today on Top Chef: Movie Edition, we’ll be putting together a little dish we like to call Surefire Blockbuster. It’s a relatively easy dish to make. Simply take one or two parts Dickens, with an adorable orphan discovering her mysterious heritage, mix in an ample supply of Chronicles of Narnia mysticism, taking care to add one low-cal Aslan substitute, beat together with a sprinkle of Inkheart, Harry Potter, and, just for a dash of spice, A Clockwork Orange, and, voilá, your masterpiece is complete! Bake well and if you’re very, very lucky, you’ll have a soufflé of international proportions which will make you millions. Or not. The Secret of Moonacre is, as you may have guessed from that intro, one of the most oddly derivative features to appeal to youngsters in quite a while. Some of that déjà vu is no doubt attributable to the film’s source novel, The Little White Horse, by Elizabeth Goudge, but under the mannered direction of Gabor Csupo (The Bridge to Terabithia), we’re inundated with one hoary cliché after another which all but obliterates whatever charm the rather formidable cast attempts to conjure. This is a film with some sparkling whimsy, but such an unbearable heaviness of being that it’s literally like watching a lead balloon plummet from lofty heights into the abyss.

Juliet Stevens as Miss Heliotrope and Dakto Blue Richards as Maria.

Winsome heroine Maria Merryweather (Dakota Blue Richards, The Golden Compass) follows behind the casket of her recently deceased father, a Colonel with a gambling addiction which has left her penniless. All Maria inherits is a dusty old book and the chance to live at the Merryweather estate of Moonacre with her none too happy about it Uncle (Ioan Gruffudd, The Fantastic Four), who chastens the girl for virtually everything she does, including breathing. Also along for the “adventure” of living with Uncle is Maria’s governess, Miss Heliotrope (Juliet Stevenson), who ups the class of this enterprise by delivering a series of rambunctious belches throughout the film. As Maria and Miss Heliotrope approach Moonacre, they’re set upon by some ruffians, one of whom Maria had spotted at her father’s burial. Uncle isn’t spilling any beans about them, and he also purloins Maria’s inherited book, telling her it’s his and her father had no right to bestow it upon her.

What ensues is an often confusing mishmash of ideas and characters, most of which and whom you’ve seen in other films. Tim Curry is on hand as the nefarious head of the Merryweathers’ nemeses, the De Noir family. As becomes evident quite early in the film, the Merryweathers and De Noirs have been engaging in a multigenerational feud which began with both families lusting after all powerful “moon pearls,” a treasure which mysteriously disappeared and set both families on centuries of questing and mutual hatred. Need it be spelled out that Maria is the key to not only discovering what has happened to the missing gems but also to the long delayed reconciliation between the feuding families?

Part of the problem with Moonacre is that it plays out like a paint by numbers escapade where the final picture is neither very picturesque nor frankly of much artistic value. This is a film that brandishes about its highminded but rather simplistic moralizing in much the same way as Csupo’s Terabithia, but with little of that film’s heart (and I'm frankly cutting more than a bit of slack to Terabithia, a film I also thought had some major issues). Some of this may be attributed to filmstock left on the cutting room floor, because this production lurches about so unevenly one has to assume some bridging segments just didn’t make it to the final cut for whatever reason. But for ever purported moment of fanciful invention (and sadly there aren’t even very many of those), there are two of leaden dialogue, completely inexplicable character motivations and an overall sense of drowning for no good purpose, something our heroine also gets to experience.

Dakota Blue Richards manages to escape this hodgepodge with a modicum of dignity, but she flounders more than a time or two as the film meanders along. The rest of the cast seems oddly uninspired, including Curry, who must certainly be sick by now of having to hiss and grimace his way through yet another villainous role. Stevenson is fun, if patently annoying, as Miss Heliotrope, and manages to actually invest the film with a little character. August Prew as Curry's son, Robin de Noir, has little to do, and I frankly wondered if he were cast simply due to his resemblance to Malcolm McDowell. The de Noir "ruffians" run around in little bowler hats and lots of mascara which make them dead ringers for A Clockwork Orange's Alex. That, at least, is a completely unexpected turn of events in a children's fantasy film, though of course one might be taken at least a bit aback by this supremely odd reference. In a film as hackneyed as The Secret of Moonacre, though, one appreciates something unexpected no matter how weird it may be.

The Secret of Moonacre Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Secret of Moonacre is a mixed bag on Blu-ray, delivered via an AVC codec in 1080p and a 2.40:1 aspect ratio. First off, the film is deliberately blanched a great deal of the time, leaving fleshtones on the pasty white side, with deliberately low contrast and an emphasis on the black to blue end of the spectrum. This gives Moonacre a very cold and frankly uninviting appearance some of the time, perhaps redolent of the moon, but not the stuff of which classic children's fantasy films are made. Detail is exceptionally sharp at times, however, which at least partially offsets the color issues. Every weathered line on Curry's face is noticeable, perhaps to the actor's chagrin. Unfortunately, this excellent resolution also points out the film's production design shortcomings. While the costumes are quite opulent and shine through magnificently here, some of the sets just look cheaply made, and not just because the Merryweather castle is a sort of dilapidated Beauty and the Beast affair. CGI is also highly variable here. The opening fantasy sequence with the Moon Princess looks decent enough, and the ghostly white horse which haunts Maria's dreams is quite fetching, but the black lion is laughably bad, and the final moon-ridden sequence doesn't have the crispness videophiles have come to expect from fare like this.

The Secret of Moonacre Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Secret of Moonacre fares considerably better with a nicely immersive lossles DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. With an abundance of different environments through which Maria traipses, we're offered a neat variety of ambient sounds. Best here are several segments in the forest, where everything from fluttering leaves to "devil dog" Wrolf's howls to the pitter patter of ruffian feet enter from various surrounds to create a very evocative soundfield. Attention to detail crops up throughout this film, including one of the final sequences, when Maria and Andrew enter a hollow in a giant tree which becomes the entrance to a cave. Reverb and echo detail here are exceptional and the increasingly claustrophobic environment is recreated admirably. The best aural moment of the film is at the climax, when a towering wave of unicorns is presented with some really thundering LFE.

The Secret of Moonacre Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Some fairly standard extras supplement the main release. These include a Behind the Scenes featurette (SD; 19:26), which shows various scene being filmed; a collection of Interviews (SD; 32:28) with all the principal cast; a Making Of featurette (SD; 23:30) which includes footage from the two previous extras, and some Deleted Scenes (SD; 11:19), which do in fact help to flesh out the story a bit more.

The Secret of Moonacre Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Younger children may find enough here to keep them modestly entertained, if not entranced. Older kids and adults are probably going to be glancing at their watches by the half hour mark. There's simply too much here that's been seen in other, better films. But if you have some kiddies you need to keep occupied for an hour and half, this is certainly worth a rental.