Parky at the Pictures (DVD 17/5/2012)

THE ADVENTURES OF MARK TWAIN.

Although Brits tend to think of Aardman Animation as being the pioneers of claymation, thanks to the exploits of Morph and Wallace and Gromit, the technique was actually devised by the American Will Vinton, who won the Academy Award for the claymated short Closed Mondays in 1974. He will be best remembered, however, for the California Raisins and Domino's Pizza Noid commercials he produced in the 1980s. But there is much to admire in his 1985 feature, The Adventures of Mark Twain, which was scripted by Vinton's wife, Susan Shadburne.

Born on 30 November 1835, as Halley's Comet made one of its occasional returns, Samuel Clemens always predicted that he would expire around the time of its return in 1910. `It will be the greatest disappointment of my life,' he once wrote after adopting the nom de plume Mark Twain, `if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together."' In fact, he passed away on 10 April, the day after the comet reached perihelion and this coincidence inspired Vinton and Shadburne's film, as Mark Twain (voiced by James Whitmore) builds a flying machine to rendezvous with his destiny.

However, what he fails to anticipate is that three of his most famous creations Tom Sawyer (Chris Ritchie), Huckleberry Finn (Gary Krug) and Becky Thatcher (Michele Mariana) stowaway on the craft and he uses his Index-a-vator to relate such favourite tales as `The Diaries of Adam and Eve', Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven', `The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County', `The Damned Human Race' and `The Mysterious Stranger'.

These latter stories take the picture into a darker territory that prevents this being a suitable film for young children (and maybe explains why it flopped so spectacularly at the box office on its original release). In his later years, Clemens became increasingly cynical and his jaundiced views on human nature are hardly child-friendly. However, admirers of Mark Twain's writing will find plenty to enjoy, as not only does Shelburne draw heavily on the original texts, but Vinson's animation is often charming and recalls the exquisite puppetry of the Czech maestro Jiri Trnka.

THE SLIPPER AND THE ROSE.

There have been several screen versions of Cinderella since Georges Méliès made Cendrillon in 1899. Bryan Forbes's The Slipper and the Rose (1976) was a lavish British musical adaptation of Charles Perrault's that was punctuated by Oscar-nominated songs by Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman. It looks handsome enough, with Tony Imi's lustrous photography highlighting the opulent sheen of Raymond Simm's production design and Julie Harris's costumes. The cast also pitch their performances the right side of pantomime. But, rather like Disney's 1950 animated take, this lacks the necessary enchantment to transport the audience.

Prince Edward of Euphrania (Richard Chamberlain) returns from meeting Princess Selena of Cattlestrote and informs the King (Michael Hordern) and Queen (Lally Bowers) that he wants to marry for love rather than for diplomatic or dynastic reasons. The Dowager Queen (Edith Evans) suggests holding a grand ball so that Edward can fall in love with a beautiful princess and he reluctantly agrees to the plan in the hope of preventing a war with Euphrania's bellicose neighbours.

Meanwhile, Cinderella (Gemma Craven) is enduring a miserable existence with her stepmother (Margaret Lockwood) and her daughters Isobella (Rosalind Ayres) and Palatine (Sherrie Hewson), who are excited to be invited to the ball at the castle. However, as Cinderella sews gowns for her ungrateful relations, her fairy godmother (Annette Crosbie) arrives to bestow a magnificent carriage upon her and dress her in elegant finery. And there can't be anyone in Oxford who doesn't know what happens next.

With Kenneth More as the Lord High Chamberlain and Julian Orchard as the Duke of Montague, this becomes somewhat convoluted after Cinders hurriedly leaves the ball and the focus shifts from romance to protocol . But the biggest disappointment here are the songs, which lack melodic originality or lyrical flair. Indeed, the whole enterprise is short on wit and the film often feels as though it had been made in the mid-1950s rather than the punk era.

BILLY BISHOP GOES TO WAR.

Actor Eric Peterson and writer-composer John Gray bring their award-winning stage play to the screen in director Barbara Willis-Sweete's Billy Bishop Goes to War. Peterson first took the role of William Avery Bishop in 1978 when he could relive the exploits of Canada's first air ace with the swaggering bravura of a young man. But, here, he essays Bishop as a man approaching death in his mid-50s and looking back on his life in a bathrobe with a bottle of gin in his hand. Nevertheless, this remains a compelling watch, as Peterson relieves his experiences during in Europe during the Great War in a musical monologue that sees him impersonating over a dozen characters.

Born into an affluent family in Owen Sound, Ontario in 1894, Bishop earned a juvenile reputation as a brawler who spurned team sports and neglected subjects at which he couldn't excel. However, he was obsessed with aviation from an early age and built his own plane from wooden crates, cardboard and string at the age of 15 and had to be rescued from the wreckage by his sister after he tried to take off from the roof.

Having failed his first year at the Royal Military College for cheating in his exams, he joined the Mississauga Horse cavalry regiment on the outbreak of the Great War, only to be invalided out of service with pneumonia. He was transferred to the 8th Canadian Mounted Rifles and survived a U-boat attack on his passage across the Atlantic. Frustrated with life in the trenches, Bishop asked to switch to the Royal Flying Corps and was subjected to fierce ribbing from snooty British comrades in arms when he settled for training as an observer. However, Bishop got his wings in November 1916 and claimed 72 kills before peace was declared.

In later years, his achievements were questioned and he struggled to adapt to civilian life, as a passenger business failed and he was glad to find a role in the Second World War as an Honorary Air Marshal of the Royal Canadian Air Force. Yet, he remained a Canadian hero and Gray and Peterson celebrate his pluck and his resilience in bouncing back from prejudice and personal adversity. However, the screenplay also examines Canada's involvement in imperial wars against the Kaiser and Hitler and the treatment of Dominion personnel by the British rank and file.

THE BURMA CONSPIRACY.

Following Deadly Revenge (2010), The Burma Conspiracy is the second feature spun off from the Largo Winch comic-book series produced by Belgians Philippe Francq and Jean Van Hamme. Chaotically scripted by director Jérôme Salle and Julien Rappenau, the plot lurches between implausible incidents and slam-bam showdowns that are well enough staged, but cut to ribbons by over-eager editor Stan Collet to a booming score by Alexandre Desplat. A hit in its native France with teenage boys, this is thick-ear entertainment that exploits the situation in one of the world's most troubled nations rather than seeks to explain it.

Having inherited the W Group from his late adoptive father (Miki Manojlovic), Tomer Sisley goes against the advice of consultant Ulrich Tukur and decides to auction it off so he can fund a charitable organisation. However, no sooner is the ink dry than Sisley is accused by International Criminal Court prosecutor Sharon Stone of being involved in the massacre of a Burmese village. What's more the chief witness against him is ex-girlfriend Mame Nakprasitte, who claims that Manojlovic and his friend Laurent Terzieff were in cahoots with vicious general Nirut Sirichanya, who was encouraged to liquidate the defenceless residents so that the W Group could mine the region's rich mineral deposits.

Escaping arrest only through Tukur's wheeler-dealing, Sisley flies to Hong Kong. But he knows he will only be able to clear his name by returning to Burma to find out what really happened three years earlier at Makiling Military Camp and he sets off with best buddy Olivier Barthélémy and valet Nicolas Vaude in tow.

With Sharon Stone almost parodying her performance in Basic Instinct (1992), this is a difficult film to take seriously. The storyline is often incomprehensible and several of the supporting players overact appallingly. Credit goes to Tomer Sisley for doing his own stunts, including a mid-air scrap and a jungle punch-up. But he has no chemistry whatsoever with Nakprasitte and, while Sale is prepared to replicate car chase sequences from the Bond movies, he would be advised to borrow some of that franchise's mordant wit.

CAPRICE.

Doris Day was coming to the end of her screen career when she made Frank Tashlin's espionage romp, Caprice (1967). Once again, Day is cast as a resourceful working girl determined to make her mark in a man's world. But, while she had just about passed muster opposite James Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock's 1956 remake of his own thriller, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Day confirmed the suspicion aroused in Midnight Lace (1960) that her Ross Hunter-era screen persona was insufficiently vulnerable to suit playing an imperilled heroine. However, she isn't given much assistance by Richard Harris, who looks thoroughly disinterested as her double-dealing beau.

When her Interpol agent father is killed during a Swiss ski chase, Day vows to find the narcotics smuggler responsible. However, as an employee of the Femina Cosmetics company, she is already preoccupied trying to find out for boss Edward Mulhare who is behind the success of Ray Walston, a former colleague who has suddenly invented a series of wonder products including water-resistant hairspray for rival firm May Fortune. But Mulhare's rival, Jack Kruschen, also has his doubts about Walston and hires FBI man Richard Harris to investigate, unaware that he is also working for Mulhare and the government.

Turning on drugs being trafficked in face powder containers, this is hardly the most original of scenarios. But Tashlin (who could never quite forget his days in socko animation) cannot resist peppering the action with slapstick set-pieces such as Walston's dragged up make-up demonstration and Day's bid to clip a lock of model Irene Tsu's hair that sit awkwardly alongside such showstoppers as Harris's helicopter rescue of Day from the same ski slope on which her father perished. Perhaps it's unsurprising that, in her autobiography, Day claimed this was her least favourite picture and it's telling that she took it instead of The Graduate (1967), in which Mike Nichols had cast her as Mrs Robinson.

CATCH .44.

Quentin Tarantino has a lot to answer for. Almost two decades after he made flashbacking non-linearity chic in Pulp Fiction, less talented acolytes are still trying to emulate his slick, sardonic cine-literate style. The latest is Aaron Harvey, who even manages to persuade Bruce Willis to appear in Catch .44, but that's where any similarity with Tarantino's 1994 gem ends.

Willis is a skittish drug baron, who sends strippers Malin Åkerman, Nikki Reed and Deborah Ann Woll on a mission to kybosh a drug deal. However, as they sit in a Louisiana diner at three in the morning listening to Åkerman waxing lyrical about the fine art of faking it, someone bursts in and the ensuing shootout results in a fatality and a Mexican stand-off.

At this point, Harvey decides to run the opening credits and proceeds to flashback to show how Åkerman, Reed and Woll landed themselves in this predicament. He also introduces Forrest Whitaker, as a trigger-happy deliveryman with a penchant for disguises and eccentric accents. But, just to complicate things a little more, Harvey also tosses in Shea Whigham as a crook on the make and Brad Dourif as a shady sheriff.

It doesn't help that every single character is utterly resistible, as it makes it difficult to care what happens to any of them. Willis clearly enjoys himself, especially when he rips into a cornball rendition of his 1987 hit `Respect Yourself', while Whitaker has fun with his peculiar Hispanic whine. But the plotting is all over the place and Harvey lacks the wit or flair to reproduce the kind of Tarantinoesque dialogue that had already begun to sound hackneyed by 1995.

DELIVER US FROM EVIL.

Dane Ole Bornedal made quite an impact with his debut feature, Nightwatch (1994), which he remade in Hollywood three years later. However, his career has been unpredictable since, as he ventured into lurid period melodrama with I Am Dina (2002), the sci-fi kidpic with The Substitute (2007) and the thriller of errors with Just Another Love Story (2007). At least these titles attempted something original, however, as Deliver Us From Evil is little more than a Jutland rehash of Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs (1972).

Lawyer Lasse Rimmer has had enough of the rat race and moves wife Lenne Nystrøm Rasted and their two children back to the remote village home that drunken brother Jens Andersen can no longer afford to run. He works as a driver for Mogens Pedersen and is mortified when he kills the boss's girlfriend (Lone Lindorff) when his truck hits her scooter while he is trying to light a cigarette. Hiding the body in a hedgerow, he tries to frame Bosnian refugee Bojan Navojec for the crime by planting incriminating evidence in his jacket. But Navojec seeks sanctuary with Rimmer and Andersen finds himself having to choose between his sibling and his peers, as Pedersen rounds up a lynch mob and besieges Rimmer's home.

Curiously narrated by Sonja Richter, who directly addresses the audience in a bid to make sense of some of the more implausible plot leaps, this is clearly intended to be a stinging rebuke about the level of racial prejudice simmering beneath the placid surface of Danish society. Moreover, Bornedal follows Peckinpah in showing how quickly bourgeois liberal ideals are discarded when basic human instincts kick in. But any political message gets lost amidst the wild acting and the clumsy attempts at gallows humour that are distasteful emphasised by the gory focus of Dan Laustsen's washed-out imagery and Nino Jacobsen's overwrought sound design.

DESERTER.

Simon Murray is quite a personality. Having amassed a sizeable fortune through his diverse business dealings, he secured a place in the Guinness Book of Records in 2004 when he become the oldest man (64) to walk unsupported to the South Pole. His wife Jennifer was also the first woman to fly solo around the world in a helicopter. However, Murray will probably be best remembered for the youthful decision to run away and join the French Foreign Legion and his book Legionnaire provides the inspiration for Martin Huberty's Deserter.

Crushed by the ending of a love affair, Paul Fox heads to Paris in the early 1960s to enlist with the Legion in order to forget. But he soon discovers that things have changed little since the days of PC Wren's Beau Geste and his romantic illusions are quickly shattered by a pitiless training regime. Moreover, the sadistic cruelty of the officers is matched by the casual racism and psychological instability of his fellow recruits, many of whom volunteered for service to escape punishment for dark deeds committed in their homelands.

Fox is relieved to find a confidante in Tom Hardy and they prove an effective team when they are sent to North Africa to combat the Front de Libération Nationale rebels fighting for independence in the Algerian War. But, when General Charles De Gaulle sues for peace, the legionnaires are divided between accepting the government's position and siding with the nationalist Pied-Noir movement intent on keeping the colony French.

Proficiently photographed by Dino Parks to capture the soul-destroying vastness of the desert and the intensity of both the heat and the tensions between former comrades, this is a serviceable adventure that reinforces the notion that war is hell. The performances are solid, but the inevitability of the rift between Fox and Hardy robs the action of its suspense, while the minor characters are limned as sketchily as the complexities of a conflict whose effects are still being felt today.

THE EXECUTION OF PRIVATE SLOVIK.

In 1949, reporter William Bradford Huie was informed about a graveyard in France for the unnamed American dead from the Second World War. He found the site in Fère-en-Tardenois and, amongst the murderers and rapists who had been given the death penalty by the US Army, he discovered Eddie Slovik, the sole American since the Civil War to have been executed for desertion. Huie's book, The Execution of Private Slovik, caused a storm when it was published in 1954, as it highlighted the role played in the incident by war hero-turned-president Dwight D. Eisenhower. Indeed, such was its infamous reputation that John F. Kennedy asked buddy Frank Sinatra to abandon plans to film it with Steve McQueen in 1960, lest it damaged his chances of reaching the White House.

Producer Richard Dubelman had less to lose, however, and he commissioned director Lamont Johnson and the renowned screenwriting team of William Link and Richard Levinson to adapt the tome in a flashbacking format for television in 1974. With Martin Sheen taking a title role that tempted Dustin Hoffman, this sincere account recalls the Detroit plumber's chequered history with the law and how he was reformed by his wife Antoinette (Mariclare Costello). But, while his criminal record precluded him from the first draft, he was called up in late 1943 and, in August 1944, Slovik was sent to fight the Nazis as part of Company G of the 109th Infantry Regiment, US 28th Infantry Division.

The story of how Slovik's first bid to desert was thwarted by the Canadian military police and how he then warned his superiors that he was psychologically unsuited to frontline duty is steadily told. But, while he emphathises with Slovik's plight as a Polak from the wrong side of the tracks who is unable to catch a break, Johnson is also intrigued by the efforts of the brass to coerce Slovik into withdrawing the handwritten confession that essentially served as his death warrant. Much is also made of his relationship with unit chaplain Fr Stafford (Ned Beatty), who accompanied the 24 year-old on 31 January 1945 and the scene in which Slovik repeatedly mutters the `Hail Mary' as a hood is placed over his head is deeply distressing.

As the traumatised everyman who refused to fight rather than fled the enemy, Sheen remains convinced that his sentence will be commuted and that he will be able to return to his previous life after a spell in the stockade. This misguided faith in the system is touching, but the teleplay largely skirts the issues of shell shock and the real motives of the Supreme Command for sending Slovik before a firing squad.

FAREWELL TO THE KING.

Adapted from a novel by Pierre Schoendoerffer, Farewell to the King (1988) is fascinating if only to see writer-director John Milius attempt to corral the concerns of Joseph Conrad, Herman Melville, Rudyard Kipling and Ernest Hemingway into a Second World War movie cast in the image of John Huston and Francis Ford Coppola. Most resembling the latter's Apocalypse Now (1979) - which, of course, was scripted by Milius under the influence of Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness - this is a magnificent muddle of a movie. It wants to celebrate the simplicity of a lost civilisation while condemning the militarist arrogance of the great powers. But it winds up being a paean to iconoclastic heroism and, thus, comes to resemble Conan the Barbarian, Milius's 1982 take on the 1930s stories of Robert E. Howard.

Having escaped a Japanese firing squad in the Philippines, American renegade sergeant Nick Nolte is swept across the Pacific to be washed up on the shores of an island off the coast of Borneo. Seeking sanctuary in the rainforest, he is captured by a tribe of headhunters who are ready to slaughter him before they catch sight of his tattoos. Three years pass and Nolte becomes the ruler of the Dayaks. He produces an heir with princess Marilyn Tokuda and teaches his subjects Irish Republican songs.

It's pretty clear, therefore, that a British commando expedition led by Colonel James Fox and Captain Nigel Havers is going to get a frosty reception. However, Havers comes to sympathise with Nolte's view that living in harmony with nature and protecting his paradise from the barbaric forces of bellicosity is a noble calling. But, when the Japanese threaten his idyll, Nolte leaps into ferocious action.

Essaying a cross between Robinson Crusoe, Mr Kurtz and the Wild Man of Borneo, Nolte delivers a typically bullish performance. However, his exchanges with Fox and Havers are hilarious in both their floridity and their assertion that American imperialism is, in some way, more morally laudable than that of the British. There is also something hopelessly naive (and not to say patronising) about Milius's depiction of the `noble savage'. Dean Semler's photography is admirable and John Bennett Perry contributes an eccentric cameo as General Douglas MacArthur. But this Boy's Own variation on The Man Who Would Be King too often reflects the more regrettable political attitudes current at the time of its setting and making.

FORBIDDEN ZONE.

Inspired by the lunacy that was the stage act of the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, Richard Elfman's Forbidden Zone (1982) could almost be the dictionary definition of a cult movie. Scripted by Matthew Bright and filmed in monochrome in 21 days spread out over 10 months, it was such a dollar-pinching production that only star Hervé Villechaize ever received payment. Despite negative reviews, it became a midnite matinee favourite and was digitally restored in 2004 and colorised four years later. Notable for affording composer Danny Elfman his first screen credit, this is very much an acquired taste.

Having discovered a door leading to the Sixth Dimension in the house in Venice, California where he keeps his heroin stash, dealer Huckleberry P. Jones (Gene Cunningham) sells the property to the Hercules family. Shortly afterwards, Squeezit Henderson (Bright under the pseudonym Toshiro Baloney) informs Frenchy (Marie-Pascale Elfman) and Flash Hercules (Phil Gordon) that he had a vision of his transgendered sister René (also Bright) falling through the cellar door into the Sixth Dimension and Frenchy cannot resist peeking inside.

On passing to the other side, Frenchy is captured by a topless princess (Gisselle Lindley) and taken to King Fausto (Hervé Villechaize) and Queen Doris (Susan Tyrrell), where the diminutive monarch takes a shine to her and has his froggy factotum Bust Rod (Jan Stuart Schwartz) imprison her in Cell 63, where she meets up with René. Meanwhile, Flash enlists the help of Gramps (Hyman Diamond) to help rescue his sister. But they are captured by Queen Doris and deposited in a septic tank, while the Princessis entrusted with Frenchy's torture and execution.

Spared by a power cut, Frenchy and her cellmates escape, as do Flash and Gramps, who make the acquaintance of Fausto's ex-wife (Viva), who was usurped a thousand years earlier by the ruthless Doris. They are soon joined in the Sixth Dimension by Pa Hercules (Cunningham again), after he blasts into space after a cigarette-induced explosion at the La Brea Tar Pit Factory, and Squeezit, who is captured by Satan (Danny Elfman) and coerced into doing a deal to hand over the Princess in return for Frenchy and René.

Squeezit is decapitated for his trouble and his head (which has suddenly sprouted chicken wings) runs to warn Fausto that Doris and Bust Rod have recaptured French and René. Following a fight between the king's past and present spouses, Ma Hercules (Virginia Rose) appears in time to mete out some maternal justice and those left standing live happily ever after (or something like that).

As is readily apparent from the plot summary, this is an anarchic pantomime that often feels as if the cast members are making it up as they go along. Influenced by Max Fleischer cartoons (and containing Gilliamesque animated segments by John Muto), the action is mostly ridiculous. But Marie-Pascale Elfman's Expressionist production design is amusing and the musical numbers (several of which are lip-synched to existing recordings by the likes of Cab Calloway and Josephine Baker) are performed with plenty of pizzazz. If you liked TV shows like H.R. Pufnstuf or such movies as Tim Burton's Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985), then you have a distinct advantage in watching this trippy tripe on those who didn't.

KINGDOM OF BLOOD.

Those who recall such classic Euro kids shows as Jean Sacha's The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1964), Hanns Wiedmann's The White Horses (1965), Cécile Aubrey's Belle and Sebastien and Yannick Andrei's The Flashing Blade (both 1967) will probably get a kick out of José Ramón Ayerra's Kingdom of Blood, a tale of derring-do set in the 17th-century that has been spun off from the popular Spanish TV show, Águila Roja.

As France, England and Portugal plot against him, Spanish king Philip IV (Xabier Elorriaga) needs a hero to ride to his rescue. However, the one man who could help him, Gonzalo de Montalvo (David Janer), is questioning his calling after his son Alonso (Guillermo Campra) is blinded in an assassination attempt plotted by Cardinal Mendoza (José Ángel Egido). But, no sooner has Gonzalo thrown away his sword than a mysterious woman begs him to rescue her father, who has been abducted and is being held prisoner with the monarch. Unable to refuse his duty or the request of a damsel in distress, Gonzalo takes up arms once more.

With Inma Cuesta as Gonzalos sister Margarita, Miryam Gallego as the scheming Marquesa, Robert Alamo as the noble doctor Juan de Calatrava and Santiago Molero as the loyal innkeeper Cipri, this is a rousing and satisfyingly old-fashioned adventure that is bolstered by its fiendish alliances and crucial secrets. Constantly seeking to bolster his power behind the throne, Mendoza is in league with the local sheriff (Francis Lorenzo) and while they suspect that the local teacher is really the masked swordsman known as the Red Eagle, only his faithful servant Satur (Javier Gutiérrez) and Friar Augustine (Adolfo Fernandez) know the truth.

Dismissed in some quarters as a ninja variation on Zorro, this always looks like a feature-length episode of a tele-series, with the plot contrivances being as shameless as the cornball dialogue. But fans of BBC series like Merlin and Robin Hood will probably warm to this bullishly played, competently made, but rarely sophisticated saga.

THE LAST TEMPLAR.

Adapted by Raymond Khoury and Suzette Couture from the former's bestseller, Paolo Barzman's The Last Templar is a two-part mini-series that often seems much longer than its interminable four hours. Stuffed with far-fetched historical fallacies and seemingly concocted from conceits borrowed from such books, movies and video games as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Romancing the Stone, Tomb Raider, The Da Vinci Code and National Treasure: Book of Secrets, this is so hilariously bad it's almost required viewing.

In 1291, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem falls to the Saracens following the Siege of Acre. Led by Martin of Carmaux (Stéphane Demers) and his mentor Aimard of Villiers (Paul-Antoine Taillefer), the last band of Knights Templar flee the city with a chest containing a secret that could rock the Christian world. When their ship, the Falcon Temple, sinks during a storm at sea, the dying Martin manages to hide a leather pouch under a gravestone on a small island and beseeches the surviving crew members to deliver an encoded letter to the head of the Templars. However, when the missive finally arrives in Paris in 1314, the Grand Master is being burnt at the stake and the location and significance of the Templar treasure seemed lost forever.

But New Yorker Bill Vance (Kenneth Welsh) seems to know all about the stash and its power to destroy organised religion and leads a daring horseback raid on a Manhattan museum to steal from an exhibition of Vatican artefacts a mechanical device that can help him decode the fabled encrypted parchment. As the daughter of a prominent archaeologist, Tess Chaykin (Mira Sorvino) attempts to thwart the robbery by seizing a lance and her efforts bring her to the attention of FBI agent Sean Daley (Scott Foley). But the case becomes more complicated as the corpses of Vance's accomplices Gus Waldron (Larry Day), Mitch Adeson (Edward Yankie) and Branko Petrovic (Mark Antony Krupa) and Tess and Sean have to join forces to stay one step ahead of both Vance and Monsignor De Angelis (Victor Garber) and his lethal sidekick Hall Plunkett (Donny Blasco) as the trail leads across Europe.

With Omar Sharif cropping up in a pivotal climactic cameo, this has pretensions of epic grandeur that it simply cannot fulfil. It's dismaying to see an Oscar winner of Sorvino's undoubted talent being wasted in a farrago that showbiz paper Variety rightly called `a mess of biblical proportions'. The dialogue is often risible, as are many of the supporting performances. But what most kills this misguided enterprise is the lameness of the humour and the complete absence of either suspense or chemistry between the leads.

THE LIVING WAKE.

Scripted by its star, Sol Tryon's The Living Wake has acquired the reputation of being movie Marmite. There's no denying stand-up comic Mike O'Connell's ambition as both writer and performer, while Jesse Eisenberg also deserves credit for playing such a selfless stooge. But this freewheeling `day in the death' farce is so enamoured of its surreal audacity that it fails to realise that hardly anyone else is in on the joke. Opening with a parody of the News on the March reel at the start of Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941), this could be taken as a parable on the modern age's obsession with hidden talent and unwarranted celebrity. But the tone is too congratulatory for this to be anything more than a self-indulgent wallow that exerts a certain grim fascination as one wonders how far O'Connell, co-scenarist Peter Kline and the enabling Tryon are prepared to go for a cheap laugh.

Still struggling to get over being abandoned as a child by his father (Jim Gaffigan), self-deluded literary genius and unabashed alcoholic Mike O'Connell has been informed by doctor Sam Goldfarb that he is suffering from a vague, but certifiably fatal ailment. Consequently, he orders biographer and general dogsbody Jesse Eisenberg to convey him around his peculiar woodland hamlet in a rickshaw so that he can invite everyone to a farewell performance that will culminate in his demise.

En route, O'Connell also banters with curmudgeonly neighbour Eddie Pepitone, arranges his Viking-style funeral, consults with psychic Rebecca Comerfield, cavorts with prostitute Colombe Jacobsen-Derstine), cadge liquor off shopkeeper Ben Duhl and steals a goat to perform a sacrifice to appease the gods. He also invites former nanny Diane Kagan to a picnic so he can try to flirt with her one last time with Diane Kagan. However, as with his attempts to coerce librarian Ann Dowd into accepting copies of his dubious books and reconcile with mother Jill Larson and brother Mark Schulte, things don't quite go according to plan.

Yet, O'Connell ploughs on undaunted. Bellowing grandiloquent monologues like a ham actor and occasionally breaking into song, he seems utterly content in his own skin and convinced of his own genius. In spite of the intervention of family doctor Harlan Baker, he insists on continuing with the wake and reaches a moment of epiphany after an encounter with his father's ghost. But he gets the last laugh, as he lives (or is that dies) out Spike Milligan's brilliant epitaph: `I told you I was ill'.

A cross between a dismal student rag sketch and a demented Wes Anderson homage, this is an exhausting and dispiriting experience. There are lots of promising ideas in the screenplay, but the execution by the debuting Tryon and the overbearing O'Connell is badly botched. The library sequence is splendid, with Dowd refusing to accept O'Connell's literary output and taking particular exception to an evidently unsavoury children's book. But too much of the remainder of the valedictory perambulation is bereft of the offbeat gallows wit that O'Connell evidently believes he is peddling, while viewing the wake itself feels like an intrusion upon private grief.