Inkheart (PG) **

You'll be in fantasy land, alright.

In this image released by Warner Bros., Brendan Fraser is shown in a scene from "Inkheart." Photo: AP.

By Rene Rodriguez, The Miami Herald

You know a movie's not working when you see minotaurs, flying monkeys, The Wizard of Oz's Toto and Helen Mirren riding a unicorn -- all on the screen at the same time -- and you're still waiting for the thing to be over so you can go home and get on with your life.

So goes Inkheart, a mostly faithful, mostly lifeless adaptation of the first of Cornelia Funke's trilogy of novels about ''Silvertongues,'' people with the supernatural ability to bring characters from books into the real world simply by reading out loud.

Based on a script by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire, Inkheart struggles to keep the story's pace from flagging while laying out Funke's complex mythology (whenever a fictional character crosses over into our world, someone here is catapulted into their fictional realm). Funke's phenomenally successful novels have been translated into 37 languages, which means there is a huge built-in fan base that will have no trouble following the herky-jerky narrative.

But even they are bound to be disappointed by the pedestrian direction by Iain Softley (The Wings of the Dove, The Skeleton Key), who is clearly out of his element with this fantastical tale. Inkheart centers on the quest by the silvertongued Mortimer Folchart (Brendan Fraser) and his 12-year-old daughter Meggie (Eliza Bennett) to bring back her mother (Sienna Guillory) from the pages of a book. But the movie never achieves the sort of transporting fantasy that formed the backbone of the novel: The limitless potential for adventure and excitement that books provide, given physical form when transplanted into our reality.

With the exception of Andy Serkis (who stood in for Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, pre-special effects) as a leering, bald villain with a God complex, none of the actors in Inkheart seem committed to the material. The usually reliable Fraser looks distracted and lost, while Paul Bettany, as the fire-juggling Dustfinger, turns his character into a series of endless, mopey sighs. We rarely see a bad performance out of Mirren, but even she falters here as Meggie's short-tempered aunt, failing to give the character the layering of humor that she was intended to provide. Instead, she's just cantankerous and irritating -- much like the rest of Inkheart.

Cast: Brendan Fraser, Eliza Bennett, Paul Bettany, Andy Serkis, Helen Mirren, Jim Broadbent, Sienna Guillory, Rafi Gavron.

Director: Iain Softley.

Screenwriter: David Lindsay-Abaire. Based on the novel by Cornelia Funke.

Producers: Iain Softley, Diana Pokorny, Cornelia Funke.

A New Line Cinema release. Running time: 106 minutes. Fantasy violence. Playing at area theaters.