Written by Mitch Glazer, this current Great Expectations retains a large number of elements from Dickens' (though most of the names have been changed) without retaining most any of Dickens' core concerns. We first meet Finn as a youngster (Jeremy James Kissner) about 10. He's living with his older sister, Maggie (Kim Dickens), and her handyman boyfriend, Joe (Chris Cooper). When Maggie runs off with another man, Joe undertakes Finn's rearing. Two critical things happen during Finn's childhood. In one scary episode, he helps an escaped con named Arthur Lustig (Robert DeNiro). In the other, he's invited by dotty heiress Ms. Dinsmoor (Anne Bancroft) to become the playmate of her niece Estella (Raquel Beaudene as a child, Gwyneth Paltrow as an adult). The years zip by. Finn and Estella grow up. As teens, they have a hot flirtation that doesn't quite amount to anything, and Estella heads off to New York, where her primary occupation seems to be "rich bitch." Disillusioned, Finn gives up his artistic ambitions and embraces his working-class roots.

Finn (Ethan Hawke) has Great Expectations for his relationship with Estella (Gwyneth Paltrow), but they come to naught.

But then, out of nowhere, Finn is offered a one-person show at a tony New York gallery. The only problem is that he hasn't painted in years. Curious. Even more curiously, his anonymous benefactor has provided enough cash for him to paint. So he goes for it. And pretty soon, guess who's doffing bra and panties so Finn can paint her in the altogether. Yes, Estella, who even hangs around for some between-the-sheets action afterwards. Well, the show's a smash, Finn's rich, and he and Estella ought to be looking at wedding rings, no? Of course not. Too much running time left. And there's that snotty rich guy named Walter Plane (Hank Azaria) who Estella has been seeing.

Great Expectations is gorgeous to look at. The film has a burnished finish that makes everything appear to come from a page in Life magazine. And few (males, anyway) will have much trouble feasting their eyes on the comely Paltrow with her long legs, swan-like neck and face any sculptor would want to chisel into stone. The picture has other attributes as well. Cooper is winning as always. Nobody does salt-of-the-earth working-class guys any better. And Bancroft has a high old time chewing the scenery as daft Ms. Dinsmoor.

But in the final analysis, this picture doesn't work despite its high production values and attractive stars. The whole film is more like the kind of video collage you'd see on MTV than it is like a real fiction feature. The individual scenes don't hang together narratively and increasingly less so as the movie goes along. An ending sequence in which Lustig reappears is both thoroughly predictable -- why else would he have played such a part in Finn's boyhood? -- and utterly preposterous. It seems Lustig has been on the lam from mob hit guys for the better part of two decades, but when he shows his face to Finn, the thugs are right behind him. The scene where the mobsters stab Lustig is abysmally edited, and Finn's subsequent catatonic inaction makes us want to throttle him.

Even clumsier is the passage surrounding Joe's unannounced appearance at Finn's art exhibition. Here, the filmmakers seem to lose all control of their material. Joe has always been Finn's biggest fan, and Finn has always regarded Joe as something like a mix of father, uncle and big brother. Moreover, until this scene, where he shows up talking too loudly and flailing his arms, we have no reason to regard Joe as anything other than altogether sensible. Somehow, though, we're supposed to see Joe now as a clodhopping hick and Finn as embarrassed by him. But not a moment of this washes. At first we're confused, and when we grasp what the filmmakers are driving at, we're irritated.