No Love Lost 

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• MGM Studios

There's a scene early in Cyrano—a musical adaptation of the classic 1897 stage play by Edmond Rostand—in which the titularwordsmith is advising a baker and wannabe poet on how to choose his literary metaphors. The baker is struggling with makingsomething-something about stars and constellations work, and Cyrano gently suggests that an analogy closer to home might bemore apt. You know, the fleshiness of dough, the sensuality of kneading, the warmth and visceral pleasure of fresh bread.

"Aha!" the baker enthuses. The music swells and the camera swoops in to big bowls of plump dough being worked over by sexilyfloured hands, fingers teasing and squeezing ... and it's all faintly squicky, and slightly laughable, yearning for earnestness butineptly falling into parody.

It's not emblematic of everything that's wrong with Cyrano, but it hits many of those discordantnotes. This is a movie that feels more like a suggestion of itself than it does an actual movie, like this was created to be amovie-within-a-movie and we've accidentally gotten the whole thing instead of just the choice snippets. Because, like, the idea ofthis movie is better than the movie itself.

Peter Dinklage—one of the finest actors working today—cast as soulful and eloquent Cyrano de Bergerac, minus the big nose butstill lacking in confidence when it comes to admitting his feelings to the woman he adores? Love it. And he can sing! He getsto do some swordfighting! But way too much is missing that is absolutely required to make this story work, including the big one: We need tobelieve that that woman he longs for is worthy of his devotion. And there's nothing here to convince us of that.

Roxanne (Haley Bennett) is very pretty, but she comes across as stupid and shallow, at best. How can she sincerely believe thatshe has fallen in love with a handsome soldier, Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), merely by catching glimpse of him across acrowded public space? How can she maintain her self-delusion when the awkward, clumsy words that come out of his mouthwhen she finally does speak with him to do not match, even remotely, the smooth, charming poetry of his letters—whichwere, of course, written by Cyrano, expressing his own passion for Roxanne? How does she not know her smitten correspondentis Cyrano himself, when he takes over from Christian to woo her, from a hiding place, at her balcony one night? She's knownCyrano since she was a child! She knows his voice!

There's only one explanation for that: She's an idiot.

This is not romantic, unless in the most depressing, most tragic interpretation of the word. There's no humor, no absurdity in thistake on one of literature's great thwarted lovers, just misery and pain. (I now long to rewatch the 1987 contemporary romantic-comedy take on Cyrano de Bergerac,Roxanne, starring Steve Martin and Daryl Hannah, which I recall as being utterly delightful.) I don't think we're intended totake this as so dark. There are touches of fairy-tale fantasy; certainly Ben Mendelsohn as the absolutely vile nobleman pursuingRoxanne is close to pantomime camp. And there is glorious color and light in the Sicilian locations (the action has been movedfrom France); the beautiful cinematography is by Seamus McGarvey, who also shot the magical The Greatest Showman and2012's audaciously stylized Anna Karenina.

That Anna Karenina was also from Cyrano director Joe Wright, and I'm afraid this is but another baffling misstep from thefilmmaker. He started out making daring, enrapturing films such as Atonement and a sexy and visceral Pride & Prejudice,but lately has fumbled through stuff like Darkest Hour (nothing but Gary Oldman stomping around in a Winston Churchill suit)and the disastrous Pan (an embarrassingly empty pastiche of beloved action blockbusters).

I'm tempted to wonder if perhaps it all works better onstage; this is based on the off-Broadway play by Erica Schmidt. (She ismarried to Peter Dinklage, and they both say the role was not written with him in mind.) But the music, also ported over fromthe play and written by the band The National, is downbeat at best, and often harsh and jarring. The unpleasantness ofCyrano is as puzzling as it is inescapable.