NOTALGIA isn't what it used to be. The Magic Roundabout was originally French, but essentially English once Emma's dad Eric Thompson put his voice to the stop-frame puppets who brought five minutes of smiles to weekday teatimes before stern men in grey suits read the Sixties' black and white news.

Stepping swiftly over the corpse of Nigel Planer's re-visit of the Enchanted Village, The Magic Roundabout is now subjected to one of those grave-digging cinematic atrocities: a belts-and-braces digitally-animated re-invention as a witless, gaudy, simple adventure with a celebrity voice for each character (Kylie for Florence, Ian McKellen's Gandalf persona as Zebedee etc).

Sadly it is time for bed for subversion and the Andy Warhol-style big flowers; no longer can mischief-making adults read between the lines and spot political pastiches (the French version) or wickedly naughty drug imagery.

The only addictive substance here is the sugar consumed by Robbie Williams's cowardly, infuriating Dougal, whose craving leads him to hi-jack a sweet-laden tricycle and crash it into the Magic Roundabout with disastrous consequences. Fair enough, he had wearied of Joanna Lumley's opera-singing cow, blue-blooded Ermintrude, failing to entertain with one of her tipsy arias, but much worse is in store.

In the collision, Zebedee's nemesis, ZeeBadDee (a fiendishly irascible Tom Baker) is released from 10,000 years of incarceration beneath the roundabout and vows to serve his dish of revenge in the traditional manner: cold. So cold, he will replace sunshine with the deepest freeze and eternal darkness.

With Florence and Zebedee both frozen out of the picture by ZeeBadDee, the Enchanted world must be saved by Dougal, stoned rabbit Dylan (Bill Nighy, in a re-run of his spaced-out rocker from Love Actually), old-colonial Ermintrude and plucky but luckless snail Brian (Jim Broadbent). Lee Evans chips in as their ever-chirpy Train, but the slapstick and action scenes have none of the thrills of a Toy Story or Finding Nemo.

The directing team of Jean Duval, Frank Passingham and Dave Borthwick falls short on nostalgia, laughs and charm, and the badinage of the surprisingly endearing Williams, dopey Nighy and put-upon Broadbent and the icy blasts of Baker cannot rescue them. The songs are wretched too.

It is time for bed long before the overdue ending.

Updated: 15:36 Thursday, February 10, 2005