Director Jim Jarmusch offers up an intriguing showcase featuring a range of characters discussing subjects ranging from 1920s Paris to nicotine as an insecticide.

A rich mix is given added allure with the participation of actors ranging from the likes of Bill Murray and Cate Blanchett to Iggy Pop and Tom Waits.

The trouble is you'd need to be mainlining caffeine and craving a nicotine hit to stay awake during the turgid vignettes taking up the first third of the movie.

Strange To Meet You is a yawn-inducing setpiece featuring comedian Steven Wright, who confuses laconic with dreary, and Italian actor Robert Benigni, surely an Oscar candidate for Most Irritating Twerp In European Cinema.

A rumination on the real fate of Elvis starring Steve Buscemi doesn't exactly see sparks flying but the low point is reached with the interminable segment No Problem with Alex Descas and Isaach de Bankole.

Things only start looking up when Cate Blanchett plays both a prissy actress and her jealous trailer-trash cousin meeting in a swanky hotel in Cousins.

Probably the strongest scene sees Coogan and Molina playing themselves except that the latter - star of Spider-Man II - reveals to a shocked Coogan that they are cousins.

It's a wry, beautifully played comment on the cult of celebrity and benefits from a structure missing from many of the other vignettes.

Also worth a look is the bizarre meeting of articulate Wu-Tang Clan rappers GZA and RZA who persuade Bill Murray's waiter to gargle with oven cleaner.

The film finishes on a high with the subtly observed Champagne featuring Taylor Mead and Bill Rice pontificating on the finer things in life, such as fizz and Mahler.

Despite Jarmusch's claims, it doesn't really work as a whole but there's ample rewards for the persistent who stay the course.

Tim Evans