Like Cillian Murphy in high heels, Breakfast On Pluto totters along with unnerving hesitancy. Writer/director Neil Jordan uses transvestism as a byword for quirky, but he ventures too far off the beaten track without a compelling story to carry him through. He has made a few inspired changes to the rites-of-passage novel by Pat McCabe about an Irish transvestite living in up in 70s London. But for every moment that glitters there are ten others that don't.

Essentially this is a scrapbook of experiences that takes Patrick 'Kitten' Brady from Ireland to London in search of the mother who abandoned him. Not much searching goes on however, with Kitten more intent on soaking up the ambience of swinging London in the late 60s-early 70s, lovingly recreated with a rocking soundtrack and lots of flocked wallpaper. Initially, Kitten's self-absorbed antics are grating, but Murphy imbues the character with a surprising naiveté that is eventually endearing.

"PSYCHEDELIC HAZE"

Unfortunately Jordan overcomplicates Kitten's daydream world with jarring flourishes, like a pair of robins who provide subtitled commentary. In fact the film works best in more dramatic mode as Kitten's dad - a priest, played with rare compassion by Liam Neeson - struggles to reach out to his wayward son. A scene lifted straight out of Paris, Texas (1984), where he confesses his sins to Kitten in a peep show booth, is especially poignant. Neeson raises the stakes whenever he's on screen, but for the most part he's absent and Murphy is left to meander through a psychedelic haze, all dressed up with nowhere to go.