Director: Jon Wright (2015)

In this determinedly old school sci-fi adventure, a British teenager rallies the resistance against giant alien robots.

It has an energetic and engaging cast and some nifty design but with a story which might just squeeze as a last minute filler into the pages of 2000AD – still the galaxy’s greatest comic – it feels and looks too much like an extended episode of Dr Who.

For three years alien invaders have locked up the Earth’s population in their own homes. They claim they will leave when they have finished studying the human race.

Incineration is the penalty for breaking the nightly curfew, it’s enforced by heavily-armoured robots who patrol the streets and the skies.

Electronic implants are used to identify the population and track their whereabouts.

When an accident leads to the discovery of how to disconnect his tagging device, teenager Sean (Callan McAuliffe) goes looking for his Dad who went missing in action fighting the initial invasion.

He’s accompanied more or less willingly by friends Nathan and Alexandra (James Tarpey and Ella Hunt).

Meanwhile his mother Kate (Gillian Anderson) is left to fight off the attentions of collaborator Robin Smythe (Ben Kingsley).

The robots are nicely designed in a Robocop Ed-209 kind of way which is definitely this year’s most popular model.

Nor can there be enough sci-fi films using WWII Spitfires in an airborne attack.

Anderson and Kingsley add a touch of acting gloss and there’s an undoubted effort to entertain – but charm and enthusiasm can only engage or interest for so long.

A couple of characters are pointedly seen reading an old copy of 2000AD.

Shotgun toting, bullet-headed cockney hard-man Wayne (Tamer Hassan) seems based on Invasion!’s Bill Savage. He even looks a little like Stanley Baker on whom the character was originally modelled.

I’ve read 2000AD since Prog 64 and would love to see more films adaptions of its characters but It’s possible the complexity and scale of the writing defeats Hollywood’s finest.

2012’s excellent Dredd was a vast improvement on Sylvester Stallone’s maligned 1995 effort.

Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 Robocop which comes closest to capturing the comic’s manic satirical spirit and this year’s Ex Machina shows how intelligent and entertaining sci-fi can be done.

Robot Overlords is as straightforward as it’s title, I just wished I enjoyed it more than I did.

★★☆☆☆