Barmy Potter

REVIEWED - MISS POTTER:Director Chris Noonan attempts to enliven the non-story by animating the drawings of Beatrix Potter in this biopic, writes Donald Clarke.

IF CHRIS Noonan, the director of Babe, intended his biopic of Beatrix Potter to breathe the same atmosphere that pervades the Edwardian writer's comforting tales of civilised frogs, ducks and kingfishers, then he is to be congratulated on achieving a partial triumph. Everything about this bland film - fashioned from suet and sweet tea - radiates unchallenging warmth, cosy reassurance and hat-tipping bonhomie.

Renée Zellweger, her face tightened into a businesslike pinch, her voice alive with the sort of squeaks and warbles that often emanate from hollows in woodland areas, inadvertently takes on the character of some friendly hedgehog or rabbit. Stick furry ears on Emily Watson's (puzzlingly bicycle-free) pert bluestocking and the author's confidante would make a very effective proto-feminist squirrel.

But, if my memory serves me right, stuff did occasionally happen in Potter's charming little books. Didn't Mr McGregor direct a firearm towards Peter Rabbit? Wasn't there a hungry fox circling Jemima Puddle-Duck? If Richard Maltby's dreary script is to be believed, Beatrix lived an admirable, though profoundly unexciting, life, whose only significant trauma caused her to - oh my! - lie down in her room for some part of the afternoon (and maybe not eat her supper).

The disputes with her conservative middle-class parents over her desire to pursue a career are routine. Her romance with Ewan McGregor's nice publisher generates no more heat than you would expect to radiate from a recently slain town-mouse.

Noonan attempts to enliven the non-story by animating Potter's drawings, thus allowing the anthropomorphic characters to contribute to the creation of their own stories. This works well enough when, reacting to Beatrix's mood during her great trauma, the animals encounter sinister birds and other unhappy phenomena. Elsewhere the effect is so twee even Squirrel Nutkin might be tempted to fling acorns at the screen.

For Potter completists only.