When I read other reviews of Inkheart, I wasn’t given much hope; which goes to show you that sometimes the only judgment you have to trust is your own. Is Inkheart perfect? No, absolutely not. It’s got a hook, it has a talented cast of actors, and it has a popular series of novels as its inspiration to draw from. Where things go wrong though is that the director lacks the scope and ambition to bring the film to a truly stirring existence. He’s unable to marry style with substance and because the former is lacking, the latter ends up suffering. Still, I think there’s enough in the finished product to recommend.

Inkheart is the name of the book within a movie based on a book. Mortimer (Brendan Fraser) is a restorer or rare books, and he’s searching for one of the rarest books of all. You see, through an accident several years earlier, Mortimer discovered an ability to bring things to life from books just by reading it aloud. This rare talent makes him a “Silver Tongue” and it cost Mortimer his wife when in exchange for bringing three characters from Inkheart to life, while she took their place in the book. Mortimer and his daughter Meg (Eliza Bennett) have been on the run for years from the dangerous villain Capricorn (Andy Serkis), while look for a way to bring the missing member of their family back.

Truthfully, it’s pretty standard fantasy fair. So it really shouldn’t have come as any surprise that the characters new to this entire books-coming-to-life thing should be so cool with it. But that was a bit odd for me. “Hey, I have the ability to make stuff out of books come to life. Want to see King Arthur’s Excalibur? Shall I conjure the tornado from the Wizard of Oz?” “Yeah. Sure, go for it. Maybe you can conjure up Lady Godiva too.” It’s one of those suspension of disbelief things because it’s okay for us in the audience to buy this stuff easily enough, but the characters’ refusal to see the obvious gives us permission to do so.

Also, I think Inkheart suffers the fate of many fantasy books turned movies by trying to cram too much into the story without giving it proper time to grow and breathe. So many characters and so many predicaments are thrown at us in such a short space and time that you don’t really get any time to get to know any of them. The final battle with Capricorn also feels horribly contrite and barely exciting. It’s probably the most static final battle I’ve ever seen, with the reveal of the dreaded monster called Shadow looking less Balrock and more Barney. However there was something about resolving the situation with writing that appealed to my pen-is-mightier-than-the-sword writer’s sensibility.

And besides, the various characters I found very appealing. Helen Mirren as Great Aunt Elinor is a treat, with her over-protective book nerdiness; she’s kind of the Henry Jones Sr. of Inkheart, if you will. Serkis is delicious as Capricorn, relishing the Lex Luthor style attitude and shorn dome. You can truly tell that Serkis enjoys playing the bad guy and he wears that ice smile like a silk suit. Jim Broadbent has a few good blows as Inkheart – the movie book’s – author, but Fraser looks bored as he finds himself facing off against magic and mayhem again for what feels like the millionth time. The film’s saving grace is probably that he doesn’t have to fight a mummy.

But in the end, I found that the energy and spirit of the film itself overcame the technical and occasional thespian failings that grind it down. It’s got a good message about the power of the written word, which, although understandably marginalized given the medium, is a good thought to leave with the Playstation generation. It’s also a reminder that there’s more to life than Harry Potter or, heaven forbid, Twilight. I wish though that the producers had managed to recruit a Tim Burton or Guillermo del Toro type director that really good have married the content with the presentation. This film had such great possibilities and it seems that only through luck that it avoided being a void.