BEAUTIFUL BOY (15) ****

Hugh Jackman stars as Senator Gary Hart in sharp-suited drama The Front Runner

WELCOME TO MARWEN (12A) HOLMES AND WATSON (15)

similar fate befalls The Upside. This glossy reworking of the award-winning 2011 French buddy comedy The Intouchables is clogged with cloying sentiment despite the best efforts of Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart to energise a pair of emotional misfits. Key scenes from the original are replayed such as the opening car chase that catalyses a flashback to events that unite the central duo. Oscar winner Nicole Kidman is only permitted to let her character’s heart beat openly in the closing frames.

Inspired by a remarkable true story, which was sensitively captured in the 2010 documentary Marwencol, director Robert Zemeckis’s heartwarming yarn of self-rediscovery fails to connect on any emotional level. In his previous work, including Back to the Future and Forrest Gump, the Oscar-winning filmmaker demonstrated a flair for plucking heartstrings while engineering fantastical grand adventures. If life is like a box of chocolates then Welcome to Marwen serves up a handsomely packaged selection of bland hard centres which are impossible to swallow without choking. A misfiring script unspools in real and imagined worlds, the latter providing a safe space where the victim of a horrific attack can piece together fragments of his shattered psyche. Tears should flow freely, especially with Steve Carell cast in the anguished lead role, but there is barely a trickle of saltwater during two disjointed and curiously underwhelming hours.

LIFE ITSELF (15)

The march of the television subscription channels into cinema continues with this Sky Cinema Original Film. Life Itself is directed by