In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Blah, blah, blah. Then God said "Let us make man", blah, blah blah. Eventually, after a while, he made lots of other stuff too, like HD tellies and Blu-ray players. At some point though, he also made director Darren Aronofsky and actor Russell Crowe, who decided that the biblical tale of Noah desperately needed a reboot with CGI effects and Ray Winstone as a baddie.

And lo, their work was done.

Once a chunk was taken from that apple in the Garden of Eden, there was bound to be trouble ahead. Family man Noah (Crowe) has a dream that the earth is going to suffer a great flood that will cleanse the sin of humankind away by wiping them out. Admittedly a bit extreme, but if that's what the creator wants...

But just because humankind has to be wiped out, it doesn't mean the creatures of the earth have to be too. And so Noah, along with his wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly) and three sons – Shem (Douglas Booth), Ham (Logan Lerman) and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll) – as well as Ila (Emma Watson), a young orphan girl they manage to save along the way, begin a massive project; they build an ark, big enough to hold two of every animal on the planet, to withstand the flooding supposedly to come.

Of course there just so happens to be enough room for themselves on board too, which, understandably, rubs a few locals up the wrong way. None so more than Tubal-Cain (Winstone), who believes that Noah has no right to build such a vessel, not on his watch, and plans to teach him a lesson.

Aronofsky isn't afraid of getting his hands dirty on quirky projects. After his first three efforts, which were all admittedly art-house fodder (Pi, Requiem for a Dream, and The Fountain), he threw the cinematic curveball that was The Wrestler, followed by the Oscar-winning Black Swan. This then, despite its theological leanings, is probably the closest thing to a Hollywood blockbuster he's directed.

The irony is that despite the source material suiting an epic setting, Aronofsky's approach is far more insular. Where it could have possibly taken on a disaster film guise, the director focuses more on the feel of a family drama. And it's this lack of scale that produces the most disappointment.

Noah's battle is two-pronged; there's the friction between himself and his family regarding his boat-building task, and then there's the inner dialogue with the patriarchal figure of the Creator - who is always referred to as that and never as God. Whether this was an attempt to not rock any religious boats, as it were, is unclear, but a Creator sounds like someone who should be making stuff out of Lego. In fact this film would have been more interesting if it had been made out of plastic bricks.

Aronofsky attempts a few action scenes, with Crowe portraying possibly the world's first action hero, but they never amount to much.

The biggest sin he commits is with the story itself; the fact that he takes some artistic license with the plot isn't that big a deal, but his almost complete dismissal of the animal angle is. Anyone at all familiar with the tale of the ark will be aware that central to its story is that of all animals, two by two, stored on it. Aronofsky is so disinterested in their story that as soon as they board the vessel, he gasses them to sleep for the duration. From that point on, they're pretty much forgotten about. It was an opportunity to really focus on the scale of the operation; just imagine how cinematic it would have been to see an incredible array of creatures board the ark. And that's what you would have to do – imagine – as the director chooses to ditch any attempt to tell their story in favour of more shots of Crowe sporting a range of subtly differing facial hair looks.

On top of that, there's also a not-so-subtle Tolkien theme to proceedings; not only does Noah and his lot look like they've just left Middle Earth, but he also introduces some Lord of the Rings-inspired CGI creatures known as The Watchers, who could easily get work after this chasing a Hobbit around for a couple of hours. Perhaps someone passed Aronofsky a Tolkien-inspired edition of the Old Testament and just decided to run with it. Again, Lego would have been a far better bet.

Perhaps Aronofsky was so focused on not offending any particular religion, or trying to make it more on trend with CGI elements, that he lost sight of everything else. What's left is a truly watered down interpretation of a classic story, that could have - and, considering the talent on board, should have - been far better than this. Less epic, more tepid.