Stormbreaker represents an attempt to launch the Alex Rider books on the big screen. Apparently all the books have been optioned as film properties with an eye towards launching the series as a potential franchise – the filmmakers no doubt having the shine of Harry Potter in their eye (which is more than clearly signalled by a scene where Alex Pettyfer sarcastically wonders if the MI6 complex is Hogwarts). The juvenile spy franchise had been attempted elsewhere in recent years – Spy Kids (2001) and sequels Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams (2002) and Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003), tv’s Kim Possible (2002– ) and Agent Cody Banks (2003) and Agent Cody 2 Banks: Destination London (2004). I thought Stormbreaker had a good deal of potential, mainly because I’d been impressed by Anthony Horowitz’s writing elsewhere (he takes both a writing and producing credit on the film), and it seemed to be (at least going by the pre-release publicity) trying to treat the idea seriously unlike all these others.

Only, Stormbreaker emerges as a thorough disappointment. The problem largely lies with Geoffrey Sax, a director from British television who previously made tv works like the Paul McGann Doctor Who (1996) and the acclaimed Tipping the Velvet (2002), as well as the theatrical ghost story White Noise (2005). It’s a bad case of the Alex Rider property having landed in the hands of a director who seems to have little feel for the material. Horowitz appears to have written the books with a certain seriousness, albeit the same level of tongue-in-cheek seriousness that most of the James Bond films take themselves, but certainly not in an inherently parodistic way. However you really can’t decide whether Sax is trying to play Stormbreaker seriously or as a silly and over-the-top. The film seems to wildly differ in tone from scene to scene. There was a whole fad for parodies of James Bond movies that came out after the success of Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery (1997) and sequels. Some of the time Stormbreaker seems to be trying to do this – Bill Nighy launches into an equivalent of the M role with an amusingly dry sarcasm, while Stephen Fry seems to be trying to conduct a parody of the Q gadgeteer – but the film isn’t really a parody. Certainly both the aforementioned Spy Kids and Agent Cody Banks films use their teenage spy concept to conduct far more in the way of parody of spy clichés than anything in Stormbreaker does.

The majority of Stormbreaker has been played as a straight spy adventure. But there are some scenes that come across as incredibly silly – like where Alex Pettyfer returns home and everything is edited in a way to suggest that there is a samurai assassin waiting in the house to kill him, but it only turns out to be Alicia Silverstone who has dressed in traditional Japanese costumery and is using a katana to chop sushi for the evening meal. The worst scene of all is a fight sequence between Alicia Silverstone and Missi Pyle with either using various kitchen implements as weapons, where Sax keeps cutting away to the tv flipping channel and punctuating the action with various happenings and sound effects, before Silverstone disposes of Pyle by impaling her on the hand with the poisonous blowfish she is cooking. One was immediately made to think of the inane fight sequences in the disastrous live-action Thunderbirds (2004). While the rest of the action scenes are played straight, most of these – the chases on a bicycle, Alex Pettyfer trying to escape from a car that is being crushed, his use of a rope to fight off about a dozen thugs, the climactic horse chase – have never felt more boiler-plated on than they do here. It’s hard to think of a recent film where the director could not seem more disinterested in the material.

On a wider level one ends up disappointed with Horowitz’s screenplay. Mickey Rourke’s world domination scheme seems rather lame and improbable. Although one was kind of amused by Horowitz’s reversal of the typecasting that occurs in most Hollywood movies where the English are cast as villains, where instead here he has the villain as a vulgar American who has launched a revenge scheme because his vulgarity was made fun of while attending an exclusive British boarding school.

Some of the performances in the film are not too bad. Bill Nighy appears to be having fun with his part, even though he is made up to look like a cadaverous civil servant, while Andy Serkis makes for a rather alarming henchman and Missi Pyle’s assistant has been construed as the live-action equivalent of a cartoon villain. Even more fun seems to be had by Mickey Rourke – an actor who has been quite spectacularly treading the comeback trail in the last couple of years with roles in films like Sin City (2005) and Domino (2005). Rourke is bizarrely made-up, wearing mascara and his face given a weather-beaten pockmarked texture that makes him look like a louche version of Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992). Hero Alex Pettyfer has been chosen for his handsome charm and acquits himself reasonably. However other names such as Ewan McGregor, Robbie Coltrane and the immensely talented Sophie Okenedo are badly underused.