The hero of “The Power of Movies” (Pantheon, 210 pages, $24) is a middle-aged academic full of neuroses. He has an overpowering disgust for the human form, “all armpits and bodily fluids – hairy meat, basically.” But he is nonetheless a creature of animal desires; when he goes to the movies, he loves to watch “almost anything with vampires in it – or Denise Richards suitably attired.” In a nightmare, he arrives at an Oxford high-table dinner dressed inappropriately and is unable to find a clean glass for his drink. In another dream, he complains that dating is hard because he is “not Brad Pitt.” The highbrow and lowbrow do daily battle in this man; he lectures on philosophy and – just like Wittgenstein, as he consoles himself – escapes whenever possible to a “mindless movie” to satisfy his “base self.”

This characterization might suggest that “The Power of Movies” is a novel, perhaps by Philip Roth or Richard Ford, whose title ironically comments on a man’s weakness, or corresponds to the title of the opus at which he toils. In fact, it is a book of film theory, and the hero is its author, Colin McGinn.

Mr. McGinn personally is present in his book more than most film theorists – or most philosophers. This may be why his foibles are more striking than his discourse. His central claim is that movies have power because they are a powerful medium with a powerful effect on audiences. This syllogistic thesis could hardly be extended into a book; instead, Mr. McGinn embarks on a fanciful exploration of how we see movies and what movies are.

Mr. McGinn takes on themes such as vision, perception, and interpretation. He makes some intriguing claims, describing the way we view films as “seeing into,” and stating that “irony is at the heart of the movie-watching experience.”Yet many of the ideas are familiar: Film is different from the other arts; film is voyeuristic; films engage our emotions; movie stars are like the gods of ancient religion.

Even his central claim, the theory that films are like dreams in many ways -not hard to accept – receives more extended treatment than it needs. Where we expect the climax of Mr. McGinn’s various arguments, we instead arrive at a fey, pseudoscientific digression on the dream factory.No,not Hollywood but the actual mechanism that creates our nighttime dreams (or Mr. McGinn’s dreams).

Having said that movies are like dreams, Mr. McGinn sets out to prove that dreams are like movies. We are asked to believe that “the brain contains its own miniature Hollywood, complete with producers, directors, actors, technicians, designers, wardrobe people, and hair stylists – and maybe even agents and publicists.” Mr. McGinn’s mind, we learn, is a busy, Ozlike place, producing the occasional “blockbuster dream.”

In a strange sort of fade-out, Mr. McGinn makes a few comments on the nature of celebrity and the effect of films (not quite advocating censorship, but coming close), and includes the stunningly vulgar concept that “Watching movies is like having sex, with the movie as the dominant partner.” (He defends this theory in more explicit language.) These scattered final thoughts undermine the extended arguments that precede them.

“I am a mere philosopher,” Mr. McGinn writes disingenuously. But does that mean we are meant to take his views on film more or less seriously? He brings in the expected names in film theory to support his ideas, but Mr. McGinn’s frame of reference for film is problematic, suggesting that of someone who spent a day in front of the television flipping back and forth between an AFI “best” program and TBS.

His examples include “Citizen Kane,” “Robocop,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “E.T.,” “High Plains Drifter,” “Rear Window,” and “Death Wish.” None of these movies receives more than a passing mention except for Mr. McGinn’s favorite movie, “Brief Encounter,” which is invoked three times.

Mr. McGinn does the serious study of film an injustice by discussing film primarily as a category. The relative youth of the cinema seems the only excuse for what would be a laughable treatment of other art forms; no one would write that books are “powerful,” nor would “books” be a subject. The very movie experience that forms the basis of all of Mr. McGinn’s theories – a screening in a dark theater – is already out of date, and while speculating on the future of direct-to-brain video, he refuses to discuss movie viewing on other, smaller screens.

Good film theory should be artful, suspenseful, and imaginative. This is why Bazin and Deleuze, for example, will endure. We can only hope that, in the pattern of the Celia Johnson character he identifies with in “Brief Encounter,” Mr. McGinn will realize that he and film theory do not belong together, and will return to the welcoming hearth of philosophy.

Ms. Holzer is the former editorial director of the Museum of the Moving Image.