In the summer of blockbusters and sequels, and sequels that are blockbusters, there’s one movie you really need to see. And to be honest, I really hate it when people tell me that. So let me apologize for using that hackneyed line, but nothing else truly fits.

I have to admit that I hadn’t read Stardust, the novel by Neil Gaiman, until I discovered the movie was coming out. Then I saw a trade paperback edition on the bookshelf of one of my favorite bookstores and picked it up. I’d intended to get around to reading it sooner, but ended up waiting until I was having a new stereo installed in my car. I read the book during the time I was waiting. Not to say that I waited a long time, but that the book read so easily and captivated me with the simple story line.

The movie emulates the novel in so many ways. Gaiman’s stripped-down prose does double duty as a book and as a screenplay. It’s easy to see why Hollywood took such an interest in developing the property.

The story is all about love, but it’s draped in the whimsical and fantastical that seems to spin so easily from Gaiman’s imagination. There are actually two love stories involved in the movie. The action centers around young Tristan Thorn (played by Charlie Cox). However, the story actually begins eighteen years before that when his father, Dunstan, slipped through the gap in the Wall and entered the enchanted lands on the other side.

The story of young Dunstan’s seduction is quickly told and narrated by Ian McKellen. McKellen’s voice lends authenticity to the tale in a pairing that’s at least as good as Peter Falk’s voiceovers in The Princess Bride. (Expect that movie to come up often in reviews of Stardust!)

In the book, Dunstan got married and had other children. In the movie, he raises Tristan alone. Dunstan (eloquently played by Nathaniel Parker) has a deep love for his son and believes that he can do anything. Tristan is more of the opinion that he is a failure and doomed to eventual nothingness.

Tristan’s true undoing lies in his unreturned love of Victoria, a pretty girl in the village where he lives. Upon learning she is going to be married to Humphrey in one week, Tristan tries to impress upon her how much he loves her and to what ends he would go to achieve her love.

While Tristan is trying to win Victoria, the King of Stronghold (Peter O’Toole in a short but stellar role), one of the kingdoms within the enchanted lands, lies dying. He’s surrounded by his seven sons. Three of them are already dead, but the other four are vying for the throne. Only one of them can become the king. Even as that particular plot point is being presented, one of the sons is killed in a way that is both horrifying and comical. The king sets his sons on a mythical quest and at each other’s throats at the same time. A magical spell hurls his necklace onto a collision course with a star and causes the star to fall from the heavens, where it assumes human form.