Tulip Fever is a fleshy, flashy costume drama that is never as much fun as it should be

REVIEW: Tulip Fever is set in 1630s Amsterdam, a heavy-breathing hotbed of sex, money, sex, unhappy marriages, sex, phantom pregnancies, sex, blackmail, and then a little more sex.

TULIP FEVER (MA15+)

Rating: two stars (2 out of 5)

Director: Justin Chadwick (The Other Boleyn Girl)

Starring: Alicia Vikander, Dane DeHaan, Christoph Waltz, Judi Dench, Holiday Grainger.

Low-voltage deflowering power

A dozy costume drama, Tulip Fever has all the makings of a bonkers bodice-ripper that might have been great guilty-pleasure fun.

Sadly, this is one of those ill-fated movies that bears all the marks of being continually reshaped — and ultimately ruined — during a lengthy and fraught post-production process.

Alicia Vikander carrying some tulips in a high-octane action sequence from Tulip Fever.

The infamous Harvey Weinstein is reported to have kept Tulip Fever on the shelf for almost three years while it was edited to his satisfaction (the movie was the last released by Weinstein’s company before it was engulfed by scandal).

Tulip Fever is set in 1630s Amsterdam, a heavy-breathing hotbed of sex, money, sex, unhappy marriages, sex, phantom pregnancies, sex, blackmail, and then a little more sex.

As for colourful characters, well, there’s a randy painter (Dane DeHaan), a randy fisherman (Jack O’Connell), a randy housemaid (Holiday Grainger), a randy merchant tycoon (Christoph Waltz) and err, a money-hungry nun (Judi Dench).

Holiday Grainger, aka The Randy Housemaid.

Looking impossibly pretty throughout all of the implausibly dirty dealings is Oscar-winner Alicia Vikander, playing the young and unwilling new wife of Waltz.

She becomes quite willing once DeHaan is commissioned to take her portrait, by which time Amsterdam is in the grips of its very own Bitcoin bubble.

Alicia Vikander brushes up against Dane DeHaan, aka The Randy Painter.

Everyone is throwing their cash at an overheated flower trading market, as a rush on tulip bulbs goes into the red zone. Most are destined to lose their shirts, a fitting outcome for folks so fond of dropping their trousers.

How all of this could have been played so straight — and ended up so politely dull — will bend minds for years to come.