Oprah Winfrey gives up the day job to be producer-star of her pet project, a lavish but ponderous version of Toni Morrison's 1987 Pulitzer-prize novel.

Oprah plays a middle-aged mother back in 1873 whose life is changed when her old slave chum Danny Glover moves in and they befriend a girl called Beloved (Thandie Newton) who seems one sandwich short of a picnic.

Director Jonathan Demme, in his first film since 1993's Philadelphia, takes it all too slowly and milks a shockingly overlong epic for every ounce of significance, making it seem heavy-weight in the wrong way.

He muddles the big dramatic highlights and muffles a lot of the words - a big fault in a talky, stagey drama.

For all that, the three stars give it their best shot and it's made with the utmost care in the most handsome, and costly production imaginable for this ambitious material.