A whimsical "what if...?" scenario spun into a gentle but occasionally almost lifeless comedy, director Alan Taylor's little jape of a movie gives us the great English actor Ian Holm as exiled emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, frustrated by years of exile on the island of St. Helena. The "real" Napoleon died there, of course, but in Taylor's scenario, he escapes and starts to make his way back to Paris, while a penniless look-a-like takes his place on the isolated isle.

Instead of the hoped-for triumphant return to the capital, the plan goes awry, and our hero is forced to travel, incognito, across Belgium, stopping along the way for a comedic interlude at Waterloo, where he finds a shop selling souvenirs marking his famous defeat. Once back in Paris, the unrecognized Napoleon sets about mounting his comeback. He has no money and no real likelihood of succeeding, but he does have his iron will and royal attitude. It is here-on the back streets of Paris among the peasants-that much of the quiet "fish out of water" comedy takes place.

Taking up with a widow called Pumpkin (Iben Hjejle, last seen in High Fidelity) who makes her meagre living by selling watermelons on the streets, "Eugene," as the little dictator is now known, waddles back and forth across Paris, frustrated at every turn by his inability to find the right people to help him recapture the throne. At the same time he, of course, falls for Pumpkin (and vice versa).

Holm seems to have cornered the market on playing famous little guys-his last role was Bilbo Baggins in installment one of the Lord of the Rings saga-and he is perfect here, bringing just the right amount of bluster, haughty high-mindedness and hubris into play, and then tempering it with a genuine dignity and a genius for strategy. When he sees the haphazard way in which Pumpkin and her fellow peasants sell their watermelons, he takes charge and maps out a military-like sales campaign that results in a successful business for all involved. It is one of the comic highlights of the film.

Unfortunately there are not too many more. There is a hollowness at the core of The Emperor's New Clothes, a kind of doing-it-by-the-numbers feel that for the most part failed to excite any real emotion-comedic or otherwise-in this viewer. Director Alan Taylor (responsible for a much more successful gentle comedy called Palookaville) doesn't really do anything wrong, per se; he just fails to realize the full ironic and satirical potential that his scenario should generate. The secondary characters aren't really up to Holm's level-Hjele as Pumpkin (why the hell did they choose that name?) is almost young enough to be Holm's granddaughter while veteran Brit character actor Tim McInnerny, as Pumpkin's spurned friend, does the prissy number that we've seen from him many times before.

Still, The Emperor's New Clothes is not an insult to the eyes or the intellect.