This amalgamation of the two sequels to the 2006 fantasy Arthur And The Invisibles (aka Arthur Et Les Minimoys) fails to live up to the superlative in its title.

Indeed, Arthur And The Dull Adventure might be more apt but such candour would hardly draw in family audiences this festive season, who are desperate for PG-friendly action and excitement.

Some of the cast have changed between the two films.

Arthur’s father is now played with wide-eyed nervousness by Robert Stanton, while the voice cast has lost Madonna as Princess Selenia, replaced here by teen idol Selena Gomez.

When is a film so bad on the page that Madonna refuses to act in it, the alarm bells should ring loud and clear.

Writer and director Luc Besson welds a rip-off of Toy Story with a B-movie about giant flying insects running amok through a backwater American town, and throws in some saccharine family bonding and romance with all of the usual messages about cherishing the world around us.

As one of the two-dimensional characters in the film coos: ‘Our mother is Nature’.

Arthur (Freddie Highmore) is staying with his grandmother (Mia Farrow) and eagerly awaits the end of the moon’s tenth cycle and his return to the Minimoy village.

Consequently, he will be able to venture back to his beloved princess Selenia (voiced by Selena Gomez).

However, Arthur’s parents (Robert Stanton, Penny Balfour) throw a spanner in the works by cutting short their stay.

Poised to leave, Arthur is shocked when a spider deposits a grain of rice in his hand engraved with a plea for help.

Fearing that Selenia and her little brother Betameche (Jimmy Fallon) are in peril, the lad hastily improvises a passage back to the Minimoys where he joins forces with bar owner Max (Snoop Dogg) and his pickpocket cousin Replay (Stacy Ferguson) to locate Selenia.

Rats and frogs stand between Arthur and the Minimoy village but when Arthur finally arrives at his destination, there is a nasty shock in store: Maltazard (Lou Reed).

Now Arthur, Selenia and Betameche will have to muster all of their courage to save Arthur’s family from a terrible fate and to stay one step ahead of Maltazard’s son, Darkos (Iggy Pop).

Arthur And The Great Adventure plods from the start and barely moves into second gear when the action changes from live action to computer animation.

Highmore loses all emotion when he is reduced to a mere voice, matching lacklustre performances from his co-stars.

Action sequences are brief and the detail in the visuals is lacking next to recent Hollywood films.

A DVD replay of Toy Story 3 or How To Train Your Dragon would be ‘greater’ adventures than anything Besson can muster here.

• Release Date: Friday 24 December 2010
• Certificate: PG
• Runtime: 107mins