London psychiatrist Hector (Pegg) has a perfect life with his sparky girlfriend Clara (Pike). But his loyal patients are all miserable, and he begins to wonder about the true nature of happiness. So he heads off on a globe-hopping quest, meeting a businessman (Skarsgard) and a sexy young woman (Zhao) in Shanghai, a wise monk (Igawa) in Tibet, an old pal (Atsma) and a drug kingpin (Reno) in Africa, and his former flame (Collette) in Los Angeles. He also tracks down the "Einstein of happiness", self-help author Professor Coreman (Plummer), in search of a breakthrough.

Alas, Pegg is badly miscast in the central role. He's likeable enough as a hapless goofball who for no reason never has a pen when he needs one, but Hector never seems like someone who's interested in genuine soul-searching. So there isn't a moment when the film feels remotely enlightening. And it doesn't help that the plot gyrates through several wildly improbable sequences, including frequent random bouts of slapstick-style clumsiness, being horrifically kidnapped by an African warlord and facing an airborne medical emergency.

Through all of this, on-screen captions inform us about the amazing things we are learning, sometimes accompanied by too-accomplished sketches (often animated) from Hector's travel diary. But it's all painfully obvious: can money buy happiness? Or can it be found in power, food, alcohol, sex, family, freedom? Is ignorance the key to happiness? Does ignoring unhappiness help? Maybe it's about being loved for who you are. It's all so trite and irrelevant that our eyes become exhausted from all the rolling.

The script is relentless in this appallingly simplistic existentialism. The only thing that makes it vaguely watchable is the gorgeous travelogue cinematography and some spiky supporting turns from the gifted Pike, Collette, Plummer and company. They're so layered that they push Pegg and his navel-gazing idiocy right off the screen. And they almost make the appalling climactic wave of sentimentalised nostalgia bearable.

themes, language, violence, innuendo

11.Aug.14