While I haven’t read the book by German author Cornelia Funke that inspired this $60 million fantasy starring Brendan Fraser, I can say with some certainty that it’s probably much, much better than the lackluster lump of a movie director Iain Softley makes out of it.

The gimmick here is that Fraser can bring characters in books to life by reading from them aloud. In turn someone from real life gets drawn into the books. This apparently happened to Fraser’s wife with the title tome and he needs a new copy so he can read her back out, but his search for one is hampered by the book’s big bad guy (Andy Serkis), whom Fraser unintentionally released.

I like that the film endorses reading books, and I really like the idea of being able to read people out of them. And it’s fun watching familiar literary creations pop up– the ticking crocodile from “Peter Pan,” the flying monkeys and Toto from “The Wizard of Oz” and Rapunzel herself. Not to mention a Minotaur and Excalibur, which Serkis tries to pry loose from its rock.

But the direction by Softley (The Skeleton Key) is so utterly uninspired as to suck from the film any charm or sense of wonder, and the top-notch effects and talented cast, which includes Helen Mirren, Paul Bettany and Jim Broadbent, struggle to compensate. What’s more Fraser, a pro at not taking big effect flicks too seriously, merely mopes around. And the supposedly epic ending is epically unexciting.

Serkis is OK as the sneering villain who loves duct tape, Mirren adds some pep as Fraser’s book-loving aunt, and Broadbent is amusing as the the title tome’s author. He gets the film’s best line, too, at one point yelling to Bettany, “You don’t have to be selfish just because I wrote you like that!”

As a fire-eater read out of the book by Fraser, Bettany, in fact, is the best thing here. He manages some decent depth as a man who misses his wife (Jennifer Connelly in a cameo) and kid and the life he has inside the book. We actually kind of feel for him and his plight, which is more than I can say about anyone or anything else in this infuriatingly inert film. – [DVD]

Adventure/Fantasy/Family

Rated PG

DVD Release Date: 6/25/09

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