There is something a little creepy about a 10-year-old boy falling in love with a 1000-year-old woman. It is even creepier when you realise that the actors who lend the characters their voices (wunderkind Freddie Highmore and Madonna) are similar ages. Okay, fine, Madonna isn't quite 1000.

Luckily the young target audience of 'Arthur and the Invisibles' aren’t likely to pick up on the unnatural perversions of this little relationship. Hopefully, they will also fail to notice that the plot is an incoherent mishmash of everything from 'King Arthur' to 'Honey I Shrunk the Kids'. And hey, if not, the animated characters have pretty funky hairdos.

This final offering from director Luc Besson ('The Fifth Element') is a combination of live action and CGI animation. Arthur (Highmore), who lives with his granny (Mia Farrow) because his parents are forced to find work in the economic crunch that is 1960s America (huh?), spends his days dreaming of his missing-in-action grandfather's adventures in Africa.

When an evil property developer threatens to take over granny's lovely country home if she fails to come up with the mortgage in two days, Arthur decides to follow clues laid down by his granddad to find a stash of rubies hidden in the garden.

Unfortunately, a good ole shovel just won't do the trick, and so Arthur sets out on an adventure in which tall African tribesmen (clearly modelled on Masai warriors) transport him through a telescope into the land of the miniature Minimoys (invisibles) who live beneath his garden. In the process he just happens to be transformed into an animated character. Spooky.

Animated Arthur quickly falls in love with the Minimoy princess Selenia (Madonna) and sets out on a mission with her and her younger brother Betameche (Jimmy Fallon) to defeat the Voldemortesque half-Minimoy/half-weevil leader Maltazard (David Bowie) and recover the rubies he has stashed in his evil lair.

A host of A-list actors, including Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Snoop Dog, Anthony Anderson and Jason Bateman, lend their voices to this little adventure, but are shamefully underutilised. The animation also falls considerably short of current standards.

And yet, there is still something strangely endearing about this simultaneously bizarre and formulaic film. Something, which can probably best be summed up in two words — Freddie Highmore.