So tell me if you’ve heard this one before. There’s a beautiful, classy girl, and she’s in love with this romantic young artist. But she happens to be engaged to a rich, powerful man, who wants to keep the young lovers apart so that he can have her all to himself.

So goes The Illusionist, a independent film going into wide release this month. The artist in this case is Edward Norton, and his art is magic. As a teenager, he fell in love with the beautiful young countess Jessica Biel, but they were forced apart because he was just a peasant. He still carries a torch for her though, and years later, after he’s become a successful and talented stage magician, he meets the countess again. But she is to be wed, to the possessive and abusive crown prince of Austria (Rufus Sewell).

There’s the premise. And yes, you probably have heard it before. It was in Titanic, it was in Shakespeare in Love, it was in Moulin Rouge. The gimmick in this case is magic tricks instead of a sinking boat, a classic play or '70s pop tunes.

Where The Illusionist differs from those other films is that those films were romances, whereas I really don’t think that The Illusionist qualifies. The love story is underdeveloped, and the film sure doesn’t have the joy of a Shakespeare in Love. I’m sure that there are people who smile in The Illusionist, but it sure feels like there aren’t.

Without giving too much away, Norton and Biel’s secret relationship is put to a sudden end about halfway into the movie. For the rest of the movie, Norton will embark on what appears to be an inscrutable plan to get his revenge. In that respect, it’s more like the George Clooney version of Ocean’s Eleven, where all the fun is in watching the plan unfold.

But Ocean’s Eleven was light and breezy, and The Illusionist is leaden and serious. Ocean’s Eleven knew they were making fun, trashy entertainment; The Illusionist seems to be under its own illusion, that it’s some kind of highbrow art.

I like Edward Norton, but this really is one of his very worst performances. In every scene, he seems to have the same opaque expression on his face. (He’s certainly no George Clooney.) I’m sure he got no support from the script, which requires him to be unreadable, but without the main character having some kind of human element, it’s very difficult to care about the story. Jessica Biel is no better; she's just a piece of cardboard without a speck of personality. This is not one of the great love stories of all time.

Another reason you can’t get behind the romance is that the story is told by a third party, Paul Giamatti, who plays the prince’s chief of police and spymaster. With M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water, this marks the second time this year that Giamatti has turned in a strong performance in a movie unworthy of him. He plays the chief as someone who likes Norton and is not especially fond of the prince, but knows better than to put his own hide on the line. He’s also mildly corrupt; he knows that the prince is impatient for his dad to get off the throne and has plans to speed up the process.

In a way, despite Norton having the title role, this is really Giamatti’s movie. He is the movie’s center; it’s he who has the only real character arc. But the center is weak, because the focus is really not on Giamatti but on Norton’s grand schemes.

Another very real problem is that the solution to the puzzle doesn’t really make sense. It would require Norton to be quite adept at predicting the future, which he doesn’t actually seem able to do. Part of Norton’s plot also requires him to no longer present himself as a stage magician but as an actual sorcerer. He builds up a strong cult of personality through his ability to conjure up what appear to be dead spirits. And it’s quite easy to see why so many people believe him to have actual powers; the things he does are physically impossible. Not only does he make ghosts appear, he can make butterflies carry handkerchiefs to him and make swords, like Excalibur, immovable from the ground. His tricks aren’t the product of smoke or mirrors but of Hollywood special effects; there is no perceivable way that he could fake his magic, especially in 19th century Europe.

The movie doesn’t follow through with that thread. There’s quite a few things it doesn’t follow through with, actually, like a spiritual revival in Norton’s audience caused by his apparitions. It’s a very well-made movie, it’s never boring, and if you’re looking for an antidote to Jackass: Number Two, The Illusionist will ably provide it for you. But I found it to be a very empty movie, one that slips from your mind after you see it. It’s like any magic act; once you know how the trick is pulled off, you don’t really care about it anymore.

Recommended: No