It's been a while since I've seen a silly baddie get the seat of his trousers set on fire, run around squawking, and then sit down in a water trough with an ecstatic sigh.

“Careful what you wish for” may have been the essential moral takeaway from the source books, but that wasn’t to discourage wishing for anything at all: In all respects, this serviceable but anodyne programmer could dream a bit bigger.

The kids and Caine are good, but this lacks the magic of its source novel(s). Younger children may enjoy it, but its attempts to entertain older viewers mostly fall flat.

This should amuse the younger members of the family, but it's unlikely to offer much more to parents than a couple of hours' respite.