Inkheart (Cert PG), the first part of a trilogy by the German writer, is brought to the screen by British director Iain Softley.
Father and daughter Brendan Fraser and Eliza Bennett share an extraordinary ability to bring to life characters from stories they read aloud but the downside is that a person from the real world follows in the opposite direction which was the fate of the little girl's mother (Sienna Guillory).
The pair enlist a motley crew (dotty aunt Helen Mirren, flamboyant author Jim Broadbent and lost fictional characters Paul Bettany and Rafi Gavron) on a quest to save the world from the evil plans of Capricorn (Andy Serkis), an escaped villain from rare book Inkheart, and free the humans trapped in the fictional world.
The plot does seem overly complicated and it seems ironic that a story supposedly championing the joys of reading books should flaunt such elaborate cinematic and computerised visual trickery, but its engaging cast of characters and visually inventive mountain castle setting make it an enjoyable diversion.
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