Friday Night Double Feature: The Hidden Fantastic

In this week’s theatrical release The Spiderwick Chronicles, Freddie Highmore plays a kid who manages to unlock the secrets of viewing the hidden fairy world. Of course, nobody believes what he sees is real because, after all, he is a kid. Obviously nobody around his character has seen any of the umpteen-billion movies where this is the major plot device.

I’m not saying kids should always be believed when they claim they’ve unlocked some hidden fantasy world, but maybe we should give them the benefit of the doubt a little more often. After all, it’s rarely adults who find the way to Narnia or randomly begin believing fairies are real. That would be a refreshing movie plot: kid stumbles upon a fantastic world, tells mom and dad, and they believe him, although I guess that removes some of the conflict from the story. Still, how many times do we have to see the story before it begins to wear thin?

Spiderwick is enjoyable enough to check out in theaters, but if you don’t feel like heading out to the theater and possibly stumbling upon a hidden fantasy world along the way, here’s a Double Feature that recreates some of the themes and story of Spiderwick you can enjoy from the comfort of your own home.

The Neverending Story

The plot device of trying to convince adults that The Neverending Story’s Fantasia is real didn’t actually appear until the movie’s horrid sequel, but Bastian discovering the story of the magical world makes for a great first movie. In fact, I’d probably rank The Neverending Story as one of my all-time favorite movies. While Bastian isn’t convincing others Fantasia exists, the story is about the land being threatened by the great “Nothing,” created by people not believing or imagining any more. As the young protagonist learns more about the magical land through Atreyu’s journey in the book, he becomes more and more invested the plight of the characters within the story. Thankfully, only Bastian really has to believe in order to help Fantasia return to its former splendor, but you can bet that if the magical land needed more help Bastian would be out there attempting to make everyone believe again.

Troll

Actor Noah Hathaway played Atreyu, the protagonist within the world of Fantasia in Neverending Story. Despite that heritage, when the actor grew up he also had to convince adults that a magical world was connected to ours, and was slowly attempting to take over the real world. The doorway to the world was in the new apartment building the Potter family had just moved into, with a nasty little troll moving from apartment to apartment and attempting to rebuild part of his own magical world within each apartment. This is one of those movies that’s more entertaining to watch now, in retrospect, as cultural references have changed (Hathaway’s character is named Harry Potter) and many of the actors have gone on do become quite popular (among the cast: Sonny Bono and Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Troll is definitely one of those guilty pleasure movies, but fits this week’s theme perfectly, even tying in an actor between the two movies. Just stay away from Troll 2, which is on the same DVD but has absolutely nothing to do with the first movie.

Other fantastic worlds close to ours: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Jumanji, Zathura, E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, The Last Mimsy

Enjoy our Double Feature suggestions? and maybe we’ll use them in a future column.