Review: Stormbreaker
Films based on kids' books. Ace. We'll put a tenner on someone mentioning Harry Potter at some point in the next few minutes, then.Stormbreaker is based on the first of Anthony Horowitz’s sextet of "ripping teen yarns", as, we suspect, nobody is calling them these days. It's an easy concept. Teenage boy turns spy, blows things up, jumps about and, eventually saves the day; real Boys Own stuff; not that anyone watching the film will be old enough to know what Boys Own is.
And yet, in that comes the films biggest problem. Yes, Stormbreaker has a reasonably impressive cast: some of them pulling off their roles, some of them camping it up, and some of them being Jimmy Carr. It has the gadgets too (provided by Stephen Fry, wonderfully playing himself. With a limp. Inspired, no?). At the end of the day, however, it's a kid, playing a spy. One leap from a child soldier then?
Putting that to one side, you've got a largely adequate kids film. Sure, it may be hard to warm to the unaturally styled, good looking, seemingly well off Alex Rider (surely anybody who had Alicia Silverstone as a guardian and a voice two octaves lower than any other in his year group would be thought of as a bit of a twat at any normal school), but the set plays are excecuted perfectly, and it's shot wonderfully.
It's too early to say if Stormbreaker heralds the start of another Brit franchise to rival Potter, but on the evidence of this it deserves another shot. Promising, if nothing else.
Stephen Ackroyd
Related Links:
stormbreaker.com
