Adapted from Charles Frazier’s 1997 novel Cold Mountain, the film by the same moniker has earned garrisons of popular acclaim.

Already nominated for more Golden Globe awards than any other film this year — eight, including Best Drama, Best Actor and Best Actress — “Cold Mountain” tells the tale of one soldier’s Odyssey-like journey across North Carolina.

Inman, an introverted mountain man played by Jude Law (“Enemy at the Gates,” “Road to Perdition”), meets Southern belle, Ada, played by Nicole Kidman (“Eyes Wide Shut,” “The Hours”). Ada has just moved from Charleston to Western North Carolina with her father, the new minister. Inman and Ada begin a coy, understated courtship that culminates in a singular kiss as Inman is on his way out the door to join the ranks on their march to battle.

Over the next few years Inman witnesses the horrors of the Civil War first hand, while Ada is left at home, pining away and attempting to carve out a life for herself following her father’s death. Ada’s thoughts and emotions are recorded in her letters to Inman, which urge him to put down his weapon and return to her arms.

Wounded in battle, Inman decides that he has had enough of war, flees the military hospital and begins a trek across the state back to the woman he loves, a woman that he barely knows.

The plot line, quite honestly, is trite.

There is nothing surprising about the boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy goes to war, girl waits, boy tries to come back to girl and well ... you can probably fill in the rest.

Therein lies the fallacy in “Cold Mountain.” The love story is the most uninteresting part of the plot line, but nevertheless is the part on which screenwriter and director Anthony Minghella (“The English Patient,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley”) chose to focus.

In its book form, Cold Mountain uses Inman and Ada’s love story as a backdrop for telling the story of what happens to all those left behind during wartime — the widowed mother, the bankrupt farmer. As a film, these vignettes of social commentary are pushed to the side and lose meaning when contrasted with the epic Rhett and Scarlett, Anthony and Cleopatra, Di Maggio and Monroe that Inman and Ada become on screen.

Or attempt to become that is.

Law’s Inman is soulless, his bumpkinism turning decent prose into lines delivered with laughable earnesty, and later quipped in smart-mouthed moments of caricature. Kidman’s Ada bears a faltering Lowcountry accent, consistent fashion-plate status and the emotional warmth of trout dip. Together, the couple’s passion barely registers. The burning, longing, unquenchable thirst one would typically think would be required to wait four years for an unrequited love to return simply is not there.

But that isn’t to say that “Cold Mountain” doesn’t have its high points.

Ruby, a rough-and-tumble, reigns-to-the-plowhorse kind of gal played by Renee Zellweger (“Chicago,” “Bridget Jones’ Diary”), breaths life into the story. Though she stomps about a bit like a Clampett, stands akimbo with comical authority and is, in general, too sweet-faced to be brusque, Zellweger brings a true dose of personality to her character.

Her bittersweet relationship with her father, Stobrod Thewes, played by Brendan Gleeson (“Gangs of New York,” “Artificial Intelligence: AI”), is the only relationship for which the viewer develops any sort of empathy. The father-daughter bond between Thewes and Ruby is palpable, its roughly hewn edges of loss and regret rub raw.

And such are the true moments of “Cold Mountain.” The chords most effectively played upon the heart strings are those of sadness — a final song for a dying soldier, a mother strung up, her hands crushed as punishment for harboring her sons who are both defectors, a goat herder killing her most loved animal to provide nourishment for the wounded Inman.

But casting plays a major part in “Cold Mountain,” robbing some of the film’s more tender moments of their significance simply due to distracting actress/actor choices.

Inman seeks shelter with a young widowed mother on his journey home. The woman, Sara, played by Natalie Portman (“Star Wars”) asks Inman to join her in bed, not in a sexual sense, rather for the warmth of a male body, a body perhaps like her husband’s when he used to lie beside her. Portman, however, is emotionally hollow; her tears seem forced. And frankly, she’s eternally cast as Queen Amidala and that former casting and her Hollywood personality overwhelms the war-worn broken-hearted Calypso she is supposed to play.

Similarly, the selection of musician Jack White for the role of Georgia is distracting and comes off as an unnecessary attempt to bring in the rock music culture, the Rolling Stone readers, to what is a Civil War film. Not to say that rock music and the Civil War don’t mix (though the end result would most likely be a repeat performance of “A Knights Tale”), but White’s casting is only slightly better than choosing Ozzy Osborne or Iggy Pop to fill the role of a traditional Appalachian mandolin player. White, the guitarist and lead vocalist from the band The White Stripes, is indeed an accomplished musician. But the role would have been best served if either an unknown personality or at least a traditional musician were selected.

Ultimately, Minghella has created a movie that is neither here nor there (both figuratively and literally as the story occurs in Western North Carolina and is filmed predominately in Romania). “Cold Mountain” isn’t really a romantic chick flick, or an adventure flick, or a historical documentary. It’s all three, but the ingredients aren’t combined well enough for the end product to be greater than the sum of its parts. Some will love it, some will hate it, but mediocrity has a knack for finding the middle ground.