JULES Verne's jewel of a novel was a hymn of praise to adventurers and technology.

Michael Anderson's film in 1956 put together the dashing David Niven and the Mexican comedian Cantinflas and came up with an Oscar.

It lasted three hours and yet this desperate doppelganger runs for half that time but feels twice as long as the original. Technology was the triumph of the Victorian age, cinema the great artistic invention of the 20th century, and where does that leave Frank Coraci's turgid re-make? Twiddling its thumbs wondering how to make 80 days go by in 90 minutes in a film era where The Day After Tomorrow can take you to the end of the world and back.

For reasons beyond comprehension, the usually cynical Mancunian Steve Coogan is designated the thankless task of being the latest foil to the hyper energy, increasingly stilted stunts and world-mangling gymnastics of Jackie Chan.

The Hong Kong martial arts master is still living off the surprise cross-over success of Rush Hour, his double-act action movie with Chris Tucker in 1998, but Chan is way past his prime.

Here he plays Passepartout, passing himself off as the half-French valet to Coogan's eccentric Phileas Fogg, the inventor who is determined to out-wit and remove Jim Broadbent's hammy and dastardly head of the Royal Academy of Science.

To do so, Fogg must cross the world in a record-breaking 80 days, with Passepartout coming along for the ride with the intention of returning a jade Buddha to his Chinese village.

With the comedy and Chan's stunts already floundering, they are joined not a moment too soon by an intrepid Impressionist painter (gap-toothed Belgian beauty Cecile de France in her first English-speaking role). Part Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, part Julie Andrews, she does her best to stir up some tepid love interest with Coogan but you long for Alan Partridge to step in.

The computer-generated effects are inadequate, the story slumbers and the series of celebrity cameos cannot match the guest list of the original. Rather than the likes of Buster Keaton, Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Ava Gardener and Noel Coward, we suffer at the hands of poodle-permed Arnold Schwarzenegger playing a deluded Turkish potentate and John Cleese popping in for a second as a snappy policeman. Look out for York's very own Mark Addy, sporting a ginger beard for some sea larks.

Coogan's comic gifts do not suit this mugging farce; Chan is but a pesky irritant and Around The World In 80 Days has had its day, in 1956.

Updated: 08:28 Friday, July 09, 2004