Les Misérables is exactly the kind of film that studios love to release around the holidays: sweeping, star-studded and, theoretically, inviting to a wide range of demographics. Of coursem Tom Hooper's new film has the added advantage of a massive built-in audience, namely, the countless fans of the Boubil and Schonberg's original musical who continue to impose their revolutionary joie de vivre upon the rest of us. As you might have guessed, I'm among the shameful minority who have never seen the stage show so was almost completely unfamiliar with its classic songs. In fact, I even gave up on the Victor Hugo novel fifty pages in (there's literally ZERO singing in it).

Despite this personal failing, the film's ridiculously stirring trailer had me enticed. I was ready and willing to meet a pop-cultural touchstone. I mention my status as philistine because I suspect a Les Mis die-hard might say I'm the wrong person to be reviewing such a prominent cultural property. Perhaps this is correct, and I'm fully ready to receive some thespian death threats on this one. That being said, I found Les Misérables a huge failure on a number of levels, some of which involve its onscreen adaptation and others which I assume must be inherent in the play itself.

As this is a film review, I'll discuss its central cinematic flaw: the direction. Don't get me wrong: Tom Hooper, who found Oscar success with The King's Speech in 2010, brings much directional flair to an ambitious project. His deft use of colour and a majestic, but nonetheless theatrical, setting had me excited in the early moments of the film. Yet the project falls down on a strange cocktail of inconsistent vision and over-reliance on gimmicks. While some scenes suggest a gritty, mud-streaked version of a hammy play, others veer wildly into a garish Tim Burton-in-Wonderland aesthetic (complete with Helena Bonham Carter wearing a kind of bird's nest on her head).

As far as gimmicks go, much has been said about Hooper's favourite film technique: the wide angle close-up. While I loved its use in Jean Valjean's (Hugh Jackman) arresting first address to the camera, the novelty had worn off slightly by the sixth time that it appeared. The singing alone is another controversial issue, complicated by Hooper's decision to have his actors' vocals recorded live on set. While the results are musically mixed, I actually enjoyed the immediacy and reality it brought to something as necessarily fake as singing about your feelings. When Anne Hathaway stops to sob halfway through 'I dreamed a dream' (the best and only memorable scene of the film), the fact that she misses a note or two made me more engaged, not less.

However, speaking to a friend who adores the musical, he complained specifically about the quality of the singing. To him, the casting of Russell Crowe (who sings like your dad at Christmas) as Javert completely missed the point of Les Misérables' popular appeal. While I enjoyed the more vocally talented cast members (including Eddie Redmayne, Samantha Barks and the aforementioned Hathaway) Crowe's bellowing at least distinguished his songs from numbers that, to a layperson, seemed mostly interchangeable. This lack of faith in either choice leaves the end product feeling inert. Les Miserables is simply not cinematic enough for the cinemagoer and not musical enough for the musical lover.

The fact is that Les Misérables is a sung-through film means its lyrics are essentially functioning as a script. This becomes a problem when, albeit with some notable exceptions, these lyrics are abysmal. While I'm willing to accept that hearing Boubil and Schonberg's songs delivered live could be a transcendent experience, I can only account for what Tom Hooper's film showed me: a bloated mess that felt longer than an Academy Awards ceremony.