The journey of J.D. Salinger from young wiseacre to world-celebrated author and notorious recluse is absorbingly traced in Danny Strong’s Rebel in the Rye.

There seems to be something missing; his life was an enigmatic puzzle and Strong hasn’t found all the pieces. It doesn’t help that his visual style is flat and the narrative is conventional enough.

Though this telling has more than its share of well-worn story beats that Salinger’s hero Holden Caulfield might accuse of being phoney, there are enough occasional insights into the creative process, as well as juicy tidbits about the secretive Salinger, to make this a very agreeable, if at times shallow, watch.

You won’t find much new light shed on the reclusive author of The Catcher in the Rye in writer-director Danny Strong’s polished but cliché-festooned biopic Rebel in the Rye.

Despite the focus on such a fertile period, it suffers from a meandering narrative and a jarring pace, particularly as it pushes on into his later years without bothering to age star Nicholas Hoult in the slightest.