That Lost in Space is even remembered today is more a testament to the cash power of baby boomer nostalgia than any inherent merit in Irwin Allen's saccharine interstellar Swiss Family Robinson. Of course, the incentive to transport these particular family values into our cinemas clearly has more to do with the open-ended format than with any overt dramatic strength: there's a franchise here to be exploited every other summer.

As such, Lost in Space is really a extended trailer, set about introducing its basic premise and timid characters to a willing audience. The mildly dysfunctional Robinsons (Ma and Pa, Mimi Rogers and the arid William Hurt; grown daughter Heather Graham; and a couple of mewling brats) are despatched on a ten-year mission to install a hypergate in the darker regions of space. Their ship, the Jupiter 2, is piloted by an arrogant space jock (the aptly named Matt LeBlanc) and sabotaged by a renegade stowaway (Gary Oldman). Only when they’re forced to fire up Dr Robinson's celebrated hyperdrive to elude disaster do they find themselves -- all together now -- lost in space.

Pretty much a triumph of its art director’s craft, Hopkins' picture allegedly contains more effects shots than any other single production, even though nothing up there on screen dispels the notion that this is really an ineffably cheap movie realised on a mega-budget. Visually, dramatically, emotionally, the recent Babylon 5 TV movies knock spots off it.

The problem is that it can't decide whether to be a nostalgia trip (the cute way it manages to fuse the original ship and robot designs into its brave new world), or a big summer family outing. Too much of this -- the odious, cutesy, big-eyed alien; Will's planetarium-sized brain; LeBlanc's square-jawed heroics -- reads like a template for a Saturday morning cartoon. The result is a picture that attempts to straddle both its kiddie audience and the mildly intrigued adults along for the ride, and satisfies neither very much. Typically for a film of its kind, Akiva Goldsman's script throws in a time-travel premise it's either unwilling or unable to follow through, preferring instead a crap CGI monster.

It's maybe invidious to talk about performances in a picture like this, save to say that Rogers just about comes out on top, but both she and Hurt look suitably embarrassed throughout, as though just dying for the hyperdrive to get them the hell out. We can only hope they were well paid. Hopkins' paramour Graham, in a rubber suit, struggles manfully with the script, but this is sadly no Boogie Nights. And Oldman just looks lost in his own particular space, the film letting his potential for sneering villainy down badly.

As big screen TV remakes go, this is beginning to smell like barrel-scraping. An end needs to be put to the madness now before some bright spark suggests The Invaders: The Movie, and by then it’ll be too late to say sorry.