At some point during The Judge a character is given a "compassionate release" from prison.

I will go straight in and say that any viewer still finding themselves in the cinema at this moment will wish for the same. In fact, spare yourself. Despite the pedigree of its stars and what one might have assumed would be easy, entertaining fare, the film feels like a sentence.

It stars Robert Downey Jr as Hank Palmer, a slick and cynical Chicago defence lawyer, who brags that "innocent people can't afford me" and that "I'm not encumbered by the law."

Palmer is of a type we've seen so many times before: a city hotshot who needs taking down a peg or two. He's also all of those things that pertain to the Downey persona: brash, flash, a motormouth, who doesn't appear particularly nice on the surface but who might just be human, underneath, if only he can break though layers of emotional damage.

Much of this damage comes courtesy of dad, Judge Joseph Palmer (Robert Duvall), as tough and demanding as a parent as he is adjudicating in his Indiana court room. When Hank's mother dies, he returns to his rural hometown for her funeral, expecting a cold welcome and an early return to the city.

He's right about the first part - after many years apart there's still no love lost between father and son. But then the judge is caught at the offending wheel of a car accident and needs a defence lawyer good enough to take on the formidable prosecutor (Billy Bob Thornton) who's gunning for him. Hank cancels his flight home. An awkward truce is called.

As a premise, this is over-familiar but with the potential to be diverting. However, what follows is over-egged to a degree I've not experienced for quite some time - with director and scriptwriters refusing to let their interminable story end until every character has had his or her moment, every dynamic and confrontation, every stock moment you can possible think of has been ticked - sometimes more than once.

And so we have numerous stages of father-son conflict and reconciliation, around and around the houses; Hank's difficult history with his older brother and more tender manner with a younger one, who is in some way autistic; his relationship with his own daughter; the reunion with his old flame (Vera Farmiga); the moral questions of his practice of law; and the sudden revelation that his father is ill. If you imagine a scene that could conceivably be added - a hug, a wake, a dramatic or comic riff - you can be assured that it's just around the corner.

Some scenes do ring true, notably those between Downey and Duvall in which their characters are at close quarters, usually dealing with the father's increasing decrepitude. One can't help feeling that on these occasions the inherent integrity of Duvall's acting, dispels the flashier elements of Downey's own style, bringing the best out of the junior partner.

But for the most part it feels horribly false and contrived. At one point there is a passing, and misguided reference To Kill A Mocking Bird - another film about a lawyer-father, yet one in which the profession and the parenting are at one, and whose eternal value and charm is sorely lacked here. The Judge director, David Dobkin, only has experience of comedies (Shanghai Knights, The Wedding Crashers) which may explain, but not excuse the lameness of his over-exertions.