Mad Max: Fury Road doesn't live up to the hype

Directed by George Miller, the high-octane car-punk ballet - The Telegraph newspaper calls it "nothing less than a Krakatoan eruption of craziness" - had pretty much everyone salivating like a butcher's dog ahead of its release, but it sent me to sleep. Twice, and both times within the first hour.

Sure, hunk du jour Tom Hardy steps effortlessly into Mel Gibson's chunky folk-hero boots as the titular Max, but he gets to grunt only about 12 words. Charlize Theron does her damndest to out-alpha Hardy as the grubby Furiosa and together they embark on a mission to deliver a lorry load of supermodels to safety while being chased across a post-apocalyptic landscape by a marginally evil baddie and his countless crazed henchmen. Phew!

Given the sparse script, most of which is gibberish, and very little character development, I struggled to care whether anyone lived or died. Movie website Cinemablend disagrees, giving it a whopping nine out of 10 and calling it "bombastically entertaining". But, for me, what is basically a non-stop-action sequence was exhausting to the point of nausea.

I really can wait for the five sequels it will no doubt spawn.

Mad Max: Fury Road is available on demand on Now TV through the Video Express First channel.