BOOKS are both a boon and a bane to Hollywood. On the one hand, Tinseltown loves raiding the book shelf; on the other, fans of a novel often bemoan that the resulting film is not fit to lace the book's spine.

That is missing the point. What matters is whether a film works as a film: last month, Bridget Jones's Diary missed the cynicism and English minutiae of Helen Fielding's original diaries but it succeeded as an old-fashioned, English romantic comedy with added Nineties neuroses, fake snow, social stereotypes and Richard Curtis one-liners.

Now, Louis de Bernieres' holiday-reading favourite takes its turn to undergo the Hollywood make-over into an unlikely wartime romance with the usual consequences of asking A-list names - Cage, Bale, Hurt - to take on accents and manners foreign to them.

Those who couldn't read beyond the difficult opening 100 pages will no doubt welcome the simplification and lighter tone; those who haven't read it - my excuse: I've been too busy in the darkness of theatres, cinemas and music halls - will focus solely on John Madden's prettily-filmed Greek island movie and plan their next holiday in the sun; those who love de Bernieres will go on about what's missing: the gravitas.

The film isn't as wonderful as you would wish nor as bad as the book devotees might have feared: competent all round but without a sense of danger or dare.

The Greek tourist board will be thrilled at how beautiful Cephallonia looks; you will fall in love with this island, even if neither the elfin-looking Penelope Cruz nor the mis-cast Nicolas Cage engage your emotions in the same way.

Men will spend far too much time deciding whether Spaniard Cruz is pretty or merely a quirky Hispanic Bjork. She plays Greek beauty Pelagia, who is betrothed to the patriotic fisherman Mandras (Christian Bale, in Action Man beard), against the wishes of her doctor father.

The year is 1940, and off Mandras goes to fight the Italians in Albania, failing to respond to any of Pelagia's 100 love letters. Into Cephallonia come the occupying Italians, not least Nicolas Cage's Puccini-loving, sensitive and handsome Captain Corelli, who likes to carry a mandolin rather than a gun.

Corelli, and his wooing mandolin, makes his move on the initially resistant Pelagia and so begins another period romance for John Madden to engineer, following on from Shakespeare In Love. Alas, Cage is simply too Hollywood American to be charmingly Italian and Cruz is yet to match the hype, her acting lacking depth and drama.

Of the English cast members, David Morrissey looks uncomfortable as a German officer but John Hurt overcomes the shock of a hedgehog haircut to enjoy the sage narrator's role of coffee house philosopher Dr Iannis, issuing prescriptions on the vagaries and ailments of love: one of the more memorable aspects of Shawn Slovo's screenplay.

As in Giuseppe Tornatore's Malena, the Second World War is largely reduced to a wallpaper role in the cause of celluloid romance, until a massacre scene jolts you into remembering how brutish, short and nasty life can be. At that point, Captain Corelli's Mandolin acquires an impact previously lacking but another layer of gloss is applied in the finale. Too much make-up, not enough pock marks.