Take one handsome prince and a maiden in distress; a coven of clamouring witches and a ship full of pirates. Add a unicorn, a fallen star and a deathbed challenge from a dying king and you have a film that begins to feel like a greatest hits compilation of fairytale plots and characters. But while Matthew Vaughn’s second feature — shown at the Edinburgh Film Festival — may not bring anything new to the fantasy genre, it has a rambunctious energy and a goofy irreverence that will win fans in the family audience.

Stardust, adapted from a graphic novel by Neil Gaiman, is something of a departure for Vaughn. Having produced Guy Ritchie’s Snatch and Lock Stock and directed Layer Cake, Vaughn now quits the criminal underworld for an otherworld called Stormhold, gorgeously realised through a combination of computer-generated images and lush cinematography.

Accessed through a forbidden gap in a dry stone wall guarded by a wizened old man, this world has held a peculiar fascination for members of the Thorn family, from the nearby village of Wall. Both father Dunstan and son Tristan (played by the newcomer Charlie Cox) have felt the lure of this magical kingdom. Tristan’s mission is to find the fallen star that landed beyond the wall and to barter it for the heart of the prettiest girl in the village (Sienna Miller). But the star turns out to be a feisty girl called Yvaine (Claire Danes), and Tristan’s quest is complicated because both the ruthless Prince Septimus and the deliciously evil and ferociously vain witch Lamia (Michelle Pfeiffer) also seek her.

The star power in the cast list is more than a match for that in the heavens above Stormhold. In a host of big names, Pfeiffer stands out as the film’s main asset. Lamia has to balance her natural tendency towards random acts of cruelty with the knowledge that her magic is running out and even the simplest curse leaves her with flapping jowls, dappled with liver spots. Pfeiffer gamely submits to a grotesque accelerated ageing process that cannot be psychologically comfortable for an actress, even one as preternaturally beautiful as Pfeiffer.

Not all the casting is as successful. Danes glowers and stomps her way through the first half of the film. There’s little in her performance of the ethereal sparkle that you would expect from an earthbound celestial body. And Robert De Niro, playing a pirate captain with a penchant for cross-dressing, is just embarrassing. It’s the kind of mincing, flouncing homosexual stereotyping that went out with the Carry On films.

Stardust is not a classic of its kind. Whereas The Princess Bride, for example, enchants its audience, Stardust tends to batter us into submission. But there’s a brio to the direction, which means that the film is always fun to watch. And in Charlie Cox’s dashing, doe-eyed Tristan, a star is born.

Released on October 19