Kevin Maher

The acting is feeble but for a solid turn from Idris Elba as the boozy bodyguard Duncan. The action is jeopardy-free and repetitive. And although the pitiful script, in vague development hell for more than two decades, seems determined to recast He-Man as a delicate, left-leaning protagonist, a finale involving gloriously captured face punches and broken jaws leaves us in no doubt that he remains a two-fisted Trumpian warrior and 1980s to the core.

It's like watching fantastically dull scenarios from the 2007 first person video game Portal apparently a source of inspiration for Parsons. There are breaks for backstory — Clark had a volatile marriage; Mary's mother was sectioned — but these add little meaningful context or narrative grounding.

It’s Jones who provides the tale with emotional ballast. His softly espoused beliefs in the values of home, family and living in glorious anonymity.

Welcome back the British rom-com! It’s been a while since we’ve had a profoundly lovely film that swaggers into life from the opening disco beats (New Order’s Blue Monday) and subsequently demonstrates an unwavering surety of purpose.

There are feeble nods to The Empire Strikes Back here and palsied winks to Return of the Jedi there, as if callbacks from the Iron Man director Jon Favreau had some magical revitalising power and were not symptomatic of a film and a franchise that exists in a grim creative void.

The cruellest blow of all is the action from the director Andrew Bernstein (who also directed the TV series). It’s generic, personality-free and very streaming.

Soderbergh, as proved with his Ocean’s franchise, is a veritable heist-meister. Yet this is possibly the genre’s loosest, least rigorous entry, a film that instead opts for existential inquiry and complex character portraiture.

No matter how many witty lines (there are a few) are placed into the mouths of postproduction beasties, they never seem real, nor do they interact credibly with their human co-stars (think Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars, but on all fours).

There is seemingly an ironic undertow to Urban’s character. He’s from “the Earthrealm”, aka Earth, and is a washed-up former action star in the Chuck Norris mould. It’s supposed to be a clever wink to the audience and a quirky acknowledgement that this is all pretty awful, right? As if joking about the stench of a sewer will somehow make it smell sweeter.

At just 80 minutes it’s small but perfectly formed and packed with more ideas and infused with more heartbreak than most overlong arthouse epics.