Anybody who’s anybody in Hollywood these days seems to have a superhero movie; now the time has arrived for Benedict Cumberbatch. Not all that long ago that name sounded like an obscure way to prepare eggs. For a Shakespearean actor probably best known for playing intellectuals such as Sherlock Holmes and Alan Turing, the beefcake undies-on-the-outside type role was always going to be a stretch.

From that perspective it makes sense Cumberbatch was cast as an arrogant know-it-all doctor in Marvel’s latest special effects coat hanger and comic-book-to-many-movies conversion. The titular character is the latest in a pantheon of ultra smug anti-heroes from the publishing juggernaut: take a bow (then make a smart arse quip) Deadpool, Ant-Man, Iron Man and the raccoon from Guardians of the Galaxy.

Strange isn’t one of those so-called Docs who are in it for the name and care not a jot for the medical profession (Dr. Dre, Dr. Who, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, Dr. Seuss). This guy is very good with a scalpel.

So good, in fact, the New York neurosurgeon is extremely picky about his clients. Patients operated on by his skillful hands need to be both challenging cases (no pushovers) and savable lives (don’t want to tarnish the record). After a terrible accident sees his Lamborghini tumbling off a cliff like a tin can rolling down a flight of stairs, Strange doesn’t emerge feeling lucky to be alive.

He returns to consciousness upset his fingers don’t work as well as they used to. Thus, no more celebrity neurosurgeon. Sort-of love interest and fellow surgeon Christine lends the freshly embittered survivor a helping hand and a bottle of wine, to no avail. She is played by Rachel McAdams in a role so under-written you wonder why they even bothered.

He is told, “You think you know how the world works” and “The reality you know is one of many.”

Instead of suffering through the agonising slow burn of rehab, Strange jets off to a far-flung land (Nepal) to find an oracle. Before he meets Ancient One (a whitewashed Tilda Swinton) he is told to forget about everything he thinks he knows.

This is a familiar spiel. The same in slightly different verse to the lectures of Yoda, Morpheus or Leo DiCaprio’s dream-invading larcenist in Inception. It’s about opening the eyes of a sceptical hero-to-be in order for them harness the powers of a spiritual force that was always around them.

This attitude-rearranging yakker is par for the course, but Christ on a bike, there’s a lot of it in Doctor Strange. The screenwriters gorge on pseudo philosophical pep talk as if it were white powder at an LA pool party.

The protagonist is told, “You think you know how the world works” and lectured about how “The reality you know is one of many.” Others observe, “There’s a strength to him” .And that Strange should “Be careful which path you travel”. Also, confusingly, given the previous caution, “there is no other way”.

An important part in this process is to explain (or at least indicate in some way) how the principle character transitions from cynical taxpayer to hero tapped into greater powers. The writers of Doctor Strange put this in the too-hard basket.

Ancient One dumps the protagonist on Mount Everest, leaving him to conjure for the first time a door-to-the-universe type thing to save himself. To show, at this crucial point, faith in the spiritual properties of the universe rather than the science he has stored in his photographic memory.

Tellingly, the latter part of this scene is shown from the teacher’s perspective. The hero-to-be simply reappears, safe and sound, with a frostbitten beard. What did he do on the mountain? Perhaps the uptight Doctor fell to his knees and wept. Maybe the writers thought showing us this vision might diminish the currency of their holier-than-thou, zinger-firing hotshot.

There are some wonderful, albeit tantalisingly brief, visual flourishes along the way.

Strange is granted something of a pass card: he gets to keep his cynicism and arrogance, but also gets to kick arse with magical powers hitherto reserved for the noble or the wicked. Luke Skywalker would be jealous; this guy never had to unlearn anything.

Despite the length of time committed to highlighting the protagonist’s journey, his transition ultimately feels ad hoc, as does much of the film’s plot. In a world unrestrained by the laws of physics, anything goes. The characters simply conjure something to get themselves out of a bind. Any conceivable scene ends any conceivable way.

There are some wonderful, albeit tantalisingly brief, visual flourishes along the way, courtesy of cinematographer Ben Davis, his team of digital whiz kids and a storyboarding department on magic mushrooms. The city-folding-in-on-itself intro is good fun, like an intricate and confusingly angled pop-up book. One likes to think director Scott Derrickson is paying homage to Escher; more likely he’s seen Inception and thought it looked cool.

The video game (dare I say it, Last Bender-esque) fight scene effects, with colliding elements and glittery CGI weapons, you can take or leave. Unlike big superhero movies that are visually interesting – Guardians of the Galaxy comes to mind, and the Hell Boy films – this one, despite all the swirling colours, has a corporate sheen to it. The bits that look like Arthur C. Clarke or Philip K. Dick’s daydreams are great; there’s just not many of them.

In one spectacular wild ride, Doctor Strange goes astral projecting and surfing through the cosmos. All manner of bright, weird, phosphorescent looking intergalactic things jostle for screen space around him. Before you know it, the protagonist looks at his hands and sees each of his fingertips sprout smaller hands. And each of the fingers on those smaller hands sprouts even smaller hands. And each of the….and so on.

One could argue this scene alone is worth the price of admission, but that would be rather ambitious with the numbers. It lasts for approximately two minutes. Why not make it ten, or even 15? That alone would give Marvel reason to claim they put something out there that was ambitious and experimental.