Doctor Strange officially opens up the Marvel movie universe to sorcery. The results feel like a grown-up Harry Potter tale with a little Iron Man thrown in for good measure. There’s even a magical school for adults where the soon-to-be-Avenger learns to jump between universes and fight with glowing CGI whips. Fast-paced and fun, the movie only lags when it comes to the magic itself.

Benedict Cumberbatch plays celebrated neurosurgeon Stephen Strange as a quippy jerk who loves fast cars and expensive watches. Basically, he’s Tony Stark with two commas in his bank balance instead of three. He’s focused on his work to the point of egomania.

His girlfriend Christine (Rachel McAdams), his patients, and even his own safety take a backseat to his next groundbreaking operation. Which is why Strange is looking at fMRI images of a brain on his mobile while driving a sports car in the rain. His hubris literally sends him careening off the road and into a ditch, leaving his hands utterly shattered.

With his career at a standstill, Strange becomes obsessed with repairing his hands. Western medicine fails him, so he goes on the superhero version of an Eat Pray Love quest to Nepal in search of a mysterious “teacher” who can heal anyone. Turns out this teacher is an ultra-powerful sorcerer known as the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton), whitewashed from the comic book’s Asian character into a “Celtic mystic” who has, for some reason, set up shop in Nepal. Once Strange gets accepted into the Ancient One’s adult wizarding school, the action reaches a fever pitch.

This is also the moment the movie lets us down a little bit. The more we learn about magic, the less interesting it gets. Though the Ancient One promises enlightenment, she mostly teaches how to engage in magical combat and teleportation using sparkly yellow lights. When the fighting gets serious, the magicians transform cities into whirling kaleidoscopes that look like somebody got really excited about borrowing the software package developed for Inception.

The question you’ll keep asking yourself is: “What kind of spells are they actually throwing?” I’m not saying I wanted an infodump about every action sequence, but a little worldbuilding would have been nice. We get tantalizing looks at a crazy spell library, full of powerful books chained to the shelves, and there are a few magical relics of interest. But in general, Doctor Strange’s sorcery is just a bunch of trippy visuals with our characters racing through them. This is especially disappointing coming from writer/director Scott Derrickson, whose Sinister movies are full of dark magic that is both original and terrifying.

Once we’re introduced to magic, major characters appear in rapid succession. Along with the Ancient One, Karl Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Wong (Benedict Wong) train Strange in the art of bending reality for justice. Meanwhile, they’re racing to prevent the Ancient One’s former student Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen in Marilyn Manson makeup) from destroying the world to gain immortality. We get some funny one-liners during the action, and entertaining astral plane fisticuffs. And, despite my earlier criticisms of the magic, I have to admit Strange’s final showdown with the Big Bad involves a satisfyingly tricky spell.

Strange’s character arc is also satisfying, especially when you compare it with a typical Marvel superhero origin story. Usually our hero goes from ordinary person to a superpowered entity who can crush justice into his foes. But Strange starts out as someone who already has essentially superhuman abilities, with talents that can bring people back from the brink of death.

In this way, Strange is a Tony Stark figure, a powerful man who learns humility. The more he cares for people outside himself, the more his powers grow. It’s also interesting to consider that Strange’s journey moves him from the realm of science to the realm of mysticism. He’s a completely different man by the end of the film, and the world he once valued more than anything is just a shadow of what he’s come to know is real.

In a year of superhero movies that felt like sprawling messes, watching a new hero being born far from Avengers headquarters is refreshing. Certainly Doctor Strange isn’t perfect, but the fast-paced fun generally makes up for some of the lazy worldbuilding. And the best part is that the movie never gets too silly and never gets too dark. If you want some quirky, delightful action, Doctor Strange gets the job done.