Mo (Brendan Fraser, right) is a book binder who reads aloud to his daughter Meggie (Mirabel O'Keefe) with unexpected consequences in Inkheart. (Murray Close/New Line Cinema/Alliance Media)

Too convoluted for kids and not witty enough for adults, Inkheart is one of those “meh” family movies that doesn’t really please anyone. It’s surprising, since the filmmakers have assembled some tasty ingredients: a best-selling fantasy novel by Cornelia Funke (known as “Germany’s J.K. Rowling”); a blue-chip cast that includes Oscar winners Helen Mirren and Jim Broadbent; and a plucky performance by British newbie Eliza Hope Bennett, as the film’s teenage heroine.

As a fantasy film, Inkheart is a clumsy concoction that lacks the imagination of Harry Potter and the humour of Stardust or The Princess Bride.

The result, however, is not a magic potion but a clumsy concoction that lacks the imagination of Harry Potter and the humour of Stardust or The Princess Bride. The direction by Iain Softley (Hackers, The Wings of the Dove) is muddy, while the screenplay, by Pulitzer-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire, is long on plot and short on sparkling dialogue.

Brendan Fraser stars as Mortimer (Mo) Folchart, a bookbinder endowed with an awkward gift: he makes fictional characters come to life whenever he reads aloud. Unfortunately, a real person is occasionally sucked into the book at the same time. (If this sounds familiar, it's because the recent Adam Sandler comedy Bedtime Stories had a somewhat similar conceit. Expect confusion in video stores.)

Inkheart opens in the Italian Alps, where Mo and his young daughter Meggie (Bennett) are visiting antiquarian booksellers in Mo’s ceaseless pursuit of a rare fantasy novel called Inkheart. It was while reading the book to Meggie nine years ago that Mo released several of its characters, while Mo’s wife, Resa (Sienna Guillory), disappeared into the novel. Mo has been keeping the accident — and his powers — secret from Meggie. But when one of the Inkheart characters, the fire juggler Dustfinger (Paul Bettany), shows up wanting to be put back into the book, Mo has to tell her the truth.

It turns out that Mo’s search is being thwarted by Capricorn (Andy Serkis, a.k.a. Gollum of The Lord of the Rings), the novel’s bad guy. He, too, was released from the pages of Inkheart, but he loves the real world and doesn’t want to return. He’s been burning copies of Inkheart while at the same time using the services of another magical reader, Darius (John Thomson), to bring all his wicked cohorts out of the volume and into his Italian stronghold.

To outwit Capricorn, Mo and Meggie enlist a good-guy team of their own, including Dustfinger and his pet marten, Gwin, Meggie’s cranky great-aunt Elinor (Mirren) and Inkheart’s eccentric author, Fenoglio (Broadbent). Also helping them are two older literary characters: Farid (Rafi Gavron), a scapegrace servant inadvertently plucked out of the Arabian Nights, and Toto, Dorothy’s canine sidekick from The Wizard of Oz.

Elinor (Helen Mirren, left) explains to a teenage Meggie (Eliza Hope Bennett) how she uses books as an escape from the real world. (Murray Close/New Line Cinema/Alliance Media)

The movie is cluttered with characters, to the point where the actors are shortchanged. My own inky heart rose in anticipation when Mirren made her sweeping entrance in turban and jewels, slyly channeling the ghost of poet Edith Sitwell. But Mirren’s stalwart efforts to turn the bibliophilic Elinor into a memorable comic character are defeated by weak writing. Broadbent has the same problem. There’s a wonderful moment when Fenoglio first appears, answering his door in an artist’s beret, his hands sticky with cake batter. For a few minutes, there’s the suggestion Broadbent might give us a delightfully dotty take on the reclusive writer. Instead, the actor reverts to his default persona for family films: the Lovable Old Codger.

As Mo, Fraser continues his onscreen transition from hunk to father figure. (Right now, he’s a hunky dad.) Playing a man desperate to find his long-lost wife, he seems content to let his doleful eyes do all the acting. Bettany works harder in the role of Dustfinger, but to no better effect. We’re supposed to be touched that he, too, wants to be reunited with a wife (played in a silent cameo by Bettany’s real-life spouse, Jennifer Connelly). But Dustfinger is a dull fellow when he isn’t juggling fire, and his animatronic marten steals all their scenes together.

The movie’s real stars are John Beard’s production design, which is gratifyingly light on CGI (at least until the climax), and the northern Italian locations. They include Capricorn’s medieval fortress, set above a mountain village, and Elinor’s gorgeous lakeside villa, which boasts a library to rival the Bodleian. Beard also designed Softley’s great-looking version of Henry James’s The Wings of the Dove, another movie that played fast and loose with literature.

As Inkheart built to its predictable conclusion, I found myself wondering what would happen if, instead of just reading juvenile classics aloud, Mo had recourse to a few adult masterpieces. Maybe he could get some help from the unstoppable Slothrop of Gravity’s Rainbow, or the giant dung beetle of The Metamorphosis. Now that might be fun to see.

Inkheart opens Jan. 23.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.