'Stardust' (PG-13)(out of four)

All the ingredients are present: The pomp and pageantry, the swashbuckling pirates and the vindictive evil witches. Heck, "Stardust" even takes it one step further: The damsel in distress isn't just any damsel, but a woman who's fallen to Earth from the heavens -- in the form of a meteorite. She's literally a fallen star.

Then again, anyone familiar with Neil Gaiman's novel no doubt already knows the tale, how one boy (Charlie Cox) goes searching for adventure and finds himself falling in love with a woman (Claire Danes) who is being chased after by not only three old witches desperate to steal her heart to regain their youth and beauty, but three princes who all believe that she holds the key to their crown.

For the record, that boy sets out with an equally selfish goal: Desperate to marry a girl back in his hometown, he promises her anything -- that he will chase down the shooting star streaking overhead and hand it to her for her birthday. When she accepts the offer, and gives him a week to deliver on his promise, he heads to the town wall -- the wall that separates the world of the humans from the world of the supernatural, the wall that no one has ever crossed -- and runs through, bracing for the unknown.

What unfolds is a surreal fusion of fantasy film, action adventure and absurdist comedy, somewhat in the vein of "The Princess Bride," but shaken up with an emphasis on the epic. Genres seem to be crashing into genres here, and at the end of the day, what "Stardust" succeeds at doing is evading the expected -- of anticipating an audience's reaction, and finding ways to keep this fantasy fresh.

Case in point: When the boy first meets the girl, she cops an attitude and he brushes her off -- hardly the sentimental way to kick off a relationship. Later, when the pair find themselves stranded on a cloud in the sky, caught up in the nets of a flying pirate ship, the violent captain proves to be a harmless teddy bear. Late in the film, as the brothers fight among themselves to capture this woman to proclaim themselves king, they are constantly mocked and insulted by a peanut gallery of their dead ancestors, a group of black-and-white ghosts floating nearby.

Even a teary-eyed change of heart by one of the old witches is not what it appears.

What's off-putting about this movie version of Gaiman's universe, particularly for those unfamiliar with the story, is the aggressive opening sequences. Clearly trying to emulate "Lord of the Rings," with its panoramic helicopter shots, to surpass "Chronicles of Narnia" with the sheer size and scope of this fictional kingdom on the other side of the wall, one gets the feeling that "Stardust" is trying to prove itself a little too obviously.

That's a pity too, because once the camera stops repeatedly taking flight, and once the introductions stop and the characters have time to catch their breath, the movie exhibits a surprising degree of subtlety and sincerity. About the time that the star-girl tells the boy, temporarily transformed into a mouse, that she has looked down at mankind for eons and become entranced by the complexities of that uniquely human thing called love, one realizes "Stardust" has some deeper things it wants to say.

Yes, it's a swashbuckler, and more obsessed with wowing us than delighting us, but within its performances -- Robert De Niro gives us the most unusual and memorable pirate since Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer is clearly relishing her part as the wicked witch, and Claire Danes is nothing short of electric as the girl whose love can brighten the universe -- and inside its larger themes of embracing the unknown, finding oneself, and discovering one's true calling, "Stardust" finds its way into the light.