Film-maker Chris Munro has an impeccable cinematic pedigree, working with the likes of John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Elizabeth Taylor and Sean Connery.

However, at the time, he was the sound mixer. Now - as a writer-director - his cast includes the bass player from Spandau Ballet, Gordon Brittas from the Brittas Empire and Minder himself, Dennis Waterman.

Shoring up this gallery of cutting edge talent is a bloke who starred in The Bill and essayed a "drunken man" in Bridget Jones's Diary. He's joined by a blonde bird who look like she might have warbled in an S Club 7 tribute band. She's also been in Hollyoaks.

At a time when British cinema is hitting its stride both commercially and artistically with the likes of The Queen and London to Brighton, this is like being teleported back to the dark ages of Robin's Nest.

Mere words cannot convey quite how excruciating it is to watch a man with no directorial talent marshalling a group of actors…who can't act. Well, not so much can't as don't.

Martin Kemp plays Will Spencer, a blue-blooded spiv who made his money selling the likes of Tower Bridge to gullible Americans, Russians and Japanese with the help of his right hand man Tom Marks (Marks & Spencer, geddit?).

Now, with fresh blood such as his buxom niece and PR girl Fiona (Joanna Taylor) and Tom's nincompoop son Travis (Booth), he hopes to pull off his biggest caper yet.

The plan: Russia is played off against America in a bidding war for the hi-tech space vehicle The Explorer (in fact, it looks like one of the feebler entrants in the early rounds of Robot Wars). But - get this - it's not theirs to sell.

In a narrative swerve of devastating originality and Usual Suspects-style suspense, things don't go exactly according to plan.

You almost feel sorry for Kemp and Barrie as they desperately pull out all the stops in a bid to inject some hilarity into a script that has all the comedic clout of a migraine.

A florid Dennis Waterman - as a hapless cop who somehow ends up as Spencer's butler - demonstrates more than ably why he's done nothing of note since Minder (and we're not including New Tricks).

However, it’s the sheer incompetence that astounds. From an Oscar-winning sound mixer, we're treated to so many sights of the boom hoving into view that it should get its own credit.

Perhaps the final ignominy is the final scene segueing into a title sequence featuring numerous bloopers. And you don't even notice the difference.

Wretched, wretched, wretched.

Tim Evans