Director Allan Moyle describes his wigged-out drugs comedy drama as "Trainspotting shot in Canada - but with more heart."

Now, why would you seek to remake Trainspotting. In the land where the Mountie roams. With an extra shot of compassion?

More than a decade ago, Trainspotting tore up the rule book of British film-making with its fast-editing, rich gallery of grotesques and underlying message that the drugs don't work.

This gives the dubious impression that mainlining heroin is only slightly more risque than sipping on a Bacardi Breezer and resultant off-your-trolley behaviour is something to aspire to.

You really wonder if the film-makers have spent any time in the company of stoners, a sad, self-obsessed social grouping who long ago crash-landed on Planet Babble.

Dexter (Speedman) and Royce (Bentley) are prime examples of the type - weak, shallow, consumed with self-loathing yet somehow convinced they've the wit of Oscar Wilde.

Their total lack of compassion is ably demonstrated when Matilda (Manning), a fellow smackhead and hooker, keels over after supping too long and too well on a stolen stash.

Unthinkingly dumping her body in the basement of a remote drive-in, they disturb preppy Satanist Greg Bryke and his diabolical crew in the process of making a human sacrifice.

What follows has the feel of a Brian Rix farce injected with bad smack and relocated to The Priory.

Dexter and Royce find themselves on the run from the dealer who lost his stash to Matilda (who isn't dead after all) as well as the marauding band of diabolists.

To be fair, Speedman and Bentley have their moments...but there aren't enough of them and, by the end, the wannabe Trainspotting comparisons are just plain daft.

You just want Begbie to saunter by and put them all out of their self-inflicted misery.

Tim Evans