REVIEW: Dune 2 - so painfully long in the telling

Dune. Goodness. So much sand. The trouble is that after 20 minutes, you will want to bury your head in it.

In fairness, when the credits eventually, finally roll, there’s no doubting that you will have seen something pretty impressive – and probably, on reflection, it will seem more and more impressive once you get home. But the fact is that impressive isn’t remotely the same as interesting. And the running time is pretty monstrous.

At least the good news is that you will almost certainly know in advance whether you are going to like this film. A simple test is whether or not you can remember a thing about Dune: Part One. If this is your bag, then Part Two’s 167 minutes will whizz by in a blissful, sci-fi euphoria. If it isn’t, then never will 167 minutes have seemed so long – apart, that is, from an ending which is excellent.

The real problem is the lack of pace that director Denis Villeneuve builds into it all – a lack of pace which equates to a total lack of tension. It’s laboured and laborious. An hour in, it feels like the film has barely begun. Two hours in, there are mutterings that war is on its way. Two and a half hours in, a character rather alarmingly declares “This has barely begun!” Oh no!

Making it drag all the more is the fact that Villeneuve plunges us immediately into an impenetrable world which has its own logic, its own language and its own terms of reference. You find yourself chasing to catch up with it – but not exactly having to run very fast.

Another problem is the sheer drabness and colourlessness of it all. Yes, there is huge invention – but wit and colour are crucial too, as the Star Wars films so beautifully showed. Villeneuve is determined to make an epic – but measures it only in minutes. Crippling too is the deadly po-faced seriousness it is all played out in. The result is tedium. Just the tiniest touch of humour somewhere would have helped immeasurably.

But it’s a decent enough story. Timothée Chalamet – so much more fun in Wonka – is the charistmatic Paul Atreides, possibly a leader in waiting, possibly the new Messiah – though Life Of Brian-like, he denies it vigorously. But the point is that he is everyone’s best hope when it comes to overthrowing the occupying forces of the ghastly Harkonnen – Baron (Stellan Skarsgård) and his sinister nephews Beast Rabban (Dave Bautista) and Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler). To vanquish them, Paul must persuade the local Fremen people that he is in sympathy with their fight for freedom. Meanwhile his mother Jessica has partaken of a funny fluid, become a mother superior, gained writing all over her face and starts wearing odd hats.

She’s played by Rebecca Ferguson who so memorably sang Never Enough in The Greatest Showman. More Than Enough would be the song in this.

But somehow, eventually it does all come together – and it’s certainly a cracking ending. The final few seconds, however, hint that there is yet more to come. Oh dear…