Apparently more than 46 million kiddiwinks tune into the adventures of cartoon teen Arnold every month on TV.

"Arnold is a cool kid with an incredible sense of justice and fair play," says producer Albie Hecht.

That's as maybe...but it doesn't mean he's got the clout to carry a movie weighing in at more than an hour at the cinema.

In fact, this is the sort of thing you can tune into any day of the week on television...except it's stretched to motion picture length.

This sees Arnold (Klein) attempting to frustrate the attempts of greedy industrialist Scheck, who looks and acts uncannily like Ronald Reagan.

Scheck's company, Future Tech Industries, with its mantra "Change is Good", plans to replace the six-square-block with a gigantic shopping mall.

So it looks like goodbye to Jolly Olly's Ice Cream, Arnold's grandparents' boarding house and the unappetisingly named butchers, Green's Meats.

Just when everyone is ready to sell out, Arnold and his ultra-cool best pal, Gerald, discover the neighbourhood has been declared an historical site.

However, Scheck's got the paper proving this in his clutches and the last person to get their hands on it will be the do-gooding Arnold.

Crudely and garishly styled, this bobs along amiably enough but never really slips the shackles of its TV origins.

Arnold is referred to as a "football-headed hero" when, in fact, he more closely resembles an anvil with a squirrel crouching on top.

To keep the adults happy there are knowing references to the Blues Brothers, Shawshank Redemption and Mission: Impossible.

Never more than a small enterprise with a big budget, it's difficult to see how this will survive in the competitive world of Shrek and Toy Story.

Tim Evans