Inkheart

New Line Cinema has become synonymous with bringing fantasy literature to cinematic life.  They dove in with Lord of the Rings and perhaps feeling they could walk on water after that phenomenal success, they tried The Golden Compass.  Finding that they were not able to float so well, they then went on to try Inkheart, a novel by Cornelia Funke, which surprisingly almost doubled it's money but still was not considered a success by Lord of the Rings standards.
The story involves a book repairer, Mo, played by Brendan Fraser, searching for a copy of the novel "Inkheart".  You see, he is a 'Silvertongue' which means that when he reads aloud, he brings what is written to life.  However, he discovered that when something comes out of a novel, something else must go back in and so, when he read Inkheart and the evil Capricorn, played by a CGI-less Andy Serkis,  and his henchmen materialise, Mo's wife, Resa disappears.  So he searches for a copy of the book to read her out of the book.  But if he does that, then something must go back in and Capricorn does not want to go.  Therefore he has been collecting all known copies of the book and burning them.  Another character that came out but does want to go back is Dustfinger, played by Paul Bettany, who unfortunately is a dubious character and often will screw over a friend if it will save him.  However, he is deceived by Capricorn when he betrays Mo, and he is not read back into the novel.  Capricorn wants to bring the evil Shadow from the novel into our world to destroy every living thing but the Silvertongue he has, has a stutter (hence his henchmen and other monsters brought out of novels, all have words tattooed on them because he hasn't successfully read them in to our world.  So Capricorn needs Mo.  Then they all discover that Mo and Resa's daughter, Meggie, is also a Silvertongue so Capricorn captures her instead.
This is not a bad movie, it is just not great for some reason.  There were some nice touches, the tattoos, the use of monsters from other novels, and the inspired casting of Helen Mirren as Mo's Aunt and Jim Broadbent as the author of Inkheart.  Paul Bettany even gets to work with his incredibly gorgeous wife AGAIN, Jennifer Connelly who has a small role as Dustfinger's wife!  The Shadow was a great character and the effects to realise it were brilliant but it was not utilised any where near what it should have been and it felt like a wasted opportunity.
There is an issue for me with the whole point to this story and it would be that what happens if you read someone out of a story and then reread the same paragraph, would another copy of that character show up?  What happens to people who go into the book?  How do they exist if their character is not in the book originally?  Where did Jim Broadbent get the paper and pencil from while in the dungeon?
Not a great movie but it had potential to be so much more.  Such a shame. 6/10