See, by reading a book to life someone from the natural world must then take that character's place within the story’s pages, Mo’s own wife Resa (Sienna Guillory) disappearing into the text of Inkheart many years earlier before he knew the full extent of the troubles his magical talents could cause. Worse, that fantasy’s most evil and disgusting villain Capricorn (Andy Serkis) was the one released from the novel’s printed bondage, and since his escape his only wish has been to take over our world just as viciously as he did the fictional one from which he was born.

Based on the first novel in a popular series of books written by Cornelia Funke, director Ian Softley’s (The Wings of the Dove) Inkheart is a pretty to look at if unspectacularly familiar adventure hard to muster up enthusiasm for. For all its whimsical notions of sparking the imaginations of children and adults alike the film instead is a remarkably tired and frustratingly boring retread, elements of everything from The Lord of the Rings to Star Wars to Labyrinth to Excalibur popping up with such annoying frequency a person could almost make a drinking game out of trying to spot them all.

It is, to put it plainly, a particularly uninspired highlight reel of what we’ve seen far too many times before, and what probably worked delightfully on the page when transferred to the screen becomes nothing more than perfunctory déjà vu. The film doesn’t go anywhere of interest. More, it doesn’t do it in a way that could be considered close to diverting. It is instead something of a bore, and while I could maybe imagine younger children managing to somewhat enjoy themselves everyone else is going to be over with the picture long before the climax even has a chance to begin.

Pity, because Softley has managed to rustle himself up a talented cast of supporting players more than capable of making even the most banal of storylines come across as being written by Shakespeare. Serkis, Guillory, Paul Bettany, Rafi Gavron and Oscar-winners Helen Mirren and Jim Broadbent go all-out, each of them trying their collective best to find emotional resonance and meaning in a cadre of idiosyncratic stock characters this particular genre tends to thrive upon.

The problem is, no matter how much they want to throw themselves into it the less it ends up mattering. Bettany, in particular, gives everything he’s got to bring his conflicted and morally uncertain street magician to life, the actor wearing his emotional heart on his ratty, fire-burned sleeve as if it were a badge of honor guaranteed to bring him and his film acclaim. But all that energy works in direct opposition to David Lindsay-Abaire’s (Robots) screenplay, the writer undercutting each potentially winning moments with countless scenes of tedium grinding all momentum to a frustratingly laborious halt.

There are a few instances where things go right. A bit with a tornado and a certain Kansas farm house is cute in a giddily nonsensical sort of way, while the introduction of Capricorn’s destructive henchman The Shadow is nothing less than a visual showstopper. I also admit to being quite taken with Javier Navarrete’s (Pan’s Labyrinth) mysteriously seductive score, the composer giving the picture an element of uncertain majesty the rest annoyingly lacks. 

Fantasy can still be a viable genre, recent works like City of Ember, Stardust and, naturally, The Lord of the Rings trilogy have more than proven that. Softley just doesn’t seem to be up to the challenge, however, nothing he does behind the camera causing Inkheart to stand out as soemthing memorable. Instead, much like a forgotten piece of pulp fiction, this film evaporates instantly from memory, the book closing on this one’s chances of success long before they even have a chance to begin.