I watched The Spiderwick Chronicles last night. Many things about it were good, especially the boy who acted as twins. It certainly had its moments, although I'm a little tired of how much the unhappy family has become as much a cliche as the happy family once used to be. It's all borrowed energy - once children's fiction resonated by reflecting the picture-perfect family people aspired to. Now it tries to get that same resonance by superficially mirroring the rather more screwed-up families many people actually live in. I don't feel a lot of thought goes into it. One more absentee father in a Hollywood kid flick isn't going to redress society's ills in any case.