Creative French director Luc Besson combines live action and animation in a children's drama that is sure to interest some kids but may put off little ones.

Young boy Arthur (Freddie Highmore) has a vivid imagination and loves reading the stories of his explorer grandfather. Living with his grandmother (played by Mia Farrow) in a house in the country (his parents are too busy to come and see him).

Apart from feeling a bit neglected, Arthur enjoys the love of his grandma and his country idyll. That is until a local businessman threatens to evict them because his grandfather has disappeared, contracts on leases are about to run out, and his grandma owes a lot of money. To save his grandmother from rack and ruin, Arthur must solve clues left for him by his grandpa and find buried treasure that may save them both from eviction.

To find the treasure, Arthur must explore a world underground, a world occupied by tiny figures, the world of minimoys or invisibles, but nasty things lurk in the murky underground as nasty character Maltazard (voice of David Bowie) will later testify.

The real-action start sets things up nicely. This looks like it will be a good adventure yarn and the interaction between Mia Farrow and Freddie Highmore as Arthur is seamless and quite funny. It's a different story though once the film goes underground into the netherworld.

The pace then becomes fairly bewildering and some of Besson's characters are decidedly odd. It's a world where characters have scary haircuts like Cleo Rocos in Big Brother and when things start flying at you, you're glad at least that this isn't in 3D. I heard a tot in the row behind me saying to her Dad "Can we go now ? I don't like it."

Younger ones certainly may not take to this film as well as they might have done had some of the characters been more pleasing to the eye. There's an early fight sequence in the underground bit with insects which goes on far too long. Some elements are good - the way straws are used as boats in a river was fun - but the film loses a lot once Mia Farrow's out of the picture.

There was a better film to be conjured here - for example if the little people had come into the real world (rather like The Borrowers) and happily disrupted the world of the nasty property developer while Arthur looked for the treasure, then Grandma (Mia Farrow) would have still been involved and and the film would have been funnier.

Besson has assembled a notable voice cast - Madonnna, Robert De Niro, Chazz Palminteri, Harvey Keitel, Emilio Estevez, Snopp Dogg (naturally playing an animated pot-smoking rasta !), a veritable who's who of Hollywood folk as you can see and the film will 'sell' on the back of the A-list voice cast. But overall Luc Besson's netherworld was ok for adults, but not quite so comfortable for children, particularly younger ones and comedy moments get lost when the film goes underground.