Only one word is needed to describe the beautifully shot cinematic modern day adaptation of Charles Dickens’ romantic novel Great Expectations boring. Or maybe a dull basket full of ripe clichs better describes this tale of poor boy falling for a snobby, rich girl.

The only thing that will keep even the most plot-challenged viewers from staying two steps ahead of this picture is if they can’t keep themselves from dozing off and end up missing something.

But between naps and screams of, Please! Something happen, the movie does try to tell the story of one young man’s passage into manhood and his rediscovery of what is truly important to him.

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Finn Bell is an aspiring 10-year-old artist who lives with his sister Maggie and her jovial boyfriend Joe (Chris Cooper) in a small Florida town along the Gulf Coast.

After an odd encounter with an escaped convict (Robert De Niro), Finn begins weekly visits to a rotting mansion to entertain Ms. Nora Dinsmoor (Anne Bancroft) the richest (and looniest) woman in the state by playing with her niece Estella.

As Finn (Ethan Hawke) grows up, the weekly visits curiously continue and he falls helplessly in love with the beautiful Estella (Gwyneth Paltrow) who even after years of companionship still treats Finn with the typical rich girl snobbery.

Estella takes off for Europe without a word one day and Finn loses all his inspiration and motivation for painting because of it. But a mysterious benefactor gives Finn the chance to paint in New York and grants him his own gallery show.

Finn eventually decides to pick up his paintbrush again and head to the Big Apple but only after he finds out Estella happens to be living there (Golly, what a surprise!).

While in New York, Finn’s hopeless love for this girl comes between him and his art career for the second time, and you eventually begin to wonder exactly why he loves her in the first place. What bonds these two to each other is as big a surprise as why this movie was adapted and redone in the first place.

Great Expectations will still fool viewers into thinking it’s good in two ways. The first is that the film is pure eye candy. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and director Alfonso Cuaron make Finn’s small Florida town on the Gulf Coast look sharp and interesting, while New York’s art world is captured brilliantly through their depiction of romanticized poverty.

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The other stand out for this flick is the performance of Cooper (Lone Star and Matewan) the most underrated actor in Hollywood. Perhaps the only interesting scene and when we finally get a character to care about in the movie is when Joe shows up to Finn’s big art show and acts like himself as opposed to the rest of the sycophants around Finn.

Any chemistry between the talented actors Hawke (Before Sunrise) and Paltrow (Emma) is swept under the carpet because Mitch Glazer’s script doesn’t give their characters a chance to grow or develop. They just seem to get older without really aging.

So if the trailer for Great Expectations looks too appetizing to pass up, at least wait for it on cable so you have that vital option of changing the channel instead of sleeping through it.

Directed by Alfonso Cuaron

Screenplay by Mitch Glazer

Finn Bell Ethan Hawke

Ms. Dinsmoor Anne Bancroft

Prisoner/Lustig Robert De Niro