Dir: Lino DiSalvo; Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Gabriel Bateman, Jim Gaffigan, Adam Lambert, Meghan Trainor, Daniel Radcliffe. U cert, 99 mins

After The Lego Movie was released in 2014, it’s easy to imagine the jubilant ker-ching of imaginary cash registers ringing out in the boardrooms of toy companies around the planet. Surely if the Danish building-block folk could weaponise decades of ambient consumer goodwill in a blockbuster animation, they could too?

Well, on the evidence of Playmobil: The Movie, no they could not. The Lego Movie worked so well in part because the essence of the product’s eternal appeal – the tension between building by the instruction book and going wackily off-piste – was an intrinsic part of the film’s visual style, core premise and emotional impact.

Since I’m not in marketing, I have no idea what the Playmobil equivalent would be, but apparently neither does this film, which means it feels like exactly what it is: an ugly, interminable, devoid-of-substance advert. Around half an hour into the critics’ preview I felt guilty for bringing along my six and four year old boys, who asked to go to the Lego shop immediately afterwards, possibly as a kind of detox. When we got home I saw their Playmobil police van on the shelf and could barely bring myself to look the little smiling plastic officers in the eye-dot.