Directed by: Jon Favreau
Starring: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde
Rating: PG-13
118 minutes

Harrison Ford (left) and Daniel Craig star in “Cowboys & Aliens.” (Courtesy photo)

"Cowboys & Aliens" is a great idea: a combination of two classically campy genres of film, something so preposterous as to be endearing. I remember sitting in bewildered awe when I saw the first trailer; how could this be anything but spectacular? I was expecting something a lot like "Pirates of the Caribbean," stupid, silly, and exciting. What we get, it turns out, isn't enough of any of the three.

Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig, "Casino Royale"), an Old West outlaw, wakes up in the American desert one day, having forgotten who or where he is, and with a strange metallic bracelet on his wrist. He wanders into a small town, where he gets himself into trouble and ends up in jail. He's about to be sent away to a federal prison when a fleet of alien ships attacks, abducting countless townspeople before Lonergan discovers he can shoot down the ships with his bracelet.

When the dust settles, Lonergan and the remaining townspeople form a proper Old West posse to go track down the aliens. Among the group are the arrogant but wealthy cattle owner Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford, "Raiders of the Lost Ark"), whose business provides much of the town's income and whose son was among the abducted, and Ella Swenson (Olivia Wilde, TV's "House"), a woman from town who seems to have some idea of what's going on. Along the way they run into Jake's old outlaw gang (which he doesn't remember) and hostile Indians, but soon they have to set aside their differences and fight the filthy extraterrestrial varmints together.

The concept and story, which aren't bad (but aren't great), come from a comic book by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg. No concept is good enough on its own without a decent story line, of course, and this is no exception. True, the story we get from Rosenberg (and a team of six screenwriters) is enough to carry the concept. But it's also lacking in creativity and depth, cardinal sins in the world of screenwriting.

And unfortunately, that's not the only area of the movie that feels mediocre. Director Jon Favreau ("Iron Man") is a little too focused on constructing his action sequences (which are nothing special) rather than developing the characters. As a result, we just don't empathize with our leads when, say, people die or are abducted, because all they're really good for is shooting a gun.

I can't lay too much blame on Favreau, though. The actors are the most disappointing part of the movie, and I can't tell if it's because they didn't take the concept seriously enough or because they took it too seriously. I'm guessing it's the latter.

Daniel Craig, the most recent James Bond, and Harrison Ford, aka Indiana Jones, are used to campy movies and shouldn't have any issue with playing up their old-timey characters. The problem is, there's a combination of bad acting (and I don't mean the so-bad-it's-good kind) and poor character development on the script's part that limits their performances to just grumbling (or, in Craig's case, pouting), halfhearted fragments of the standard cowboy caricature.

The same goes for Wilde, although her role is slightly different from the others, so it's hard to say if she dropped the ball or was fine. Suffice it to say, no one gives a memorable performance, except maybe Paul Dano ("There Will Be Blood"), as Dolarhyde's spoiled-rotten son.

I don't mean to suggest that there is a right way and a wrong way to make this movie. Would I have preferred an over-the-top action movie here? Yes. A comedy of the absurd? Absolutely. The premise calls for it, or so you'd think. Favreau chose to go a more direct route, making it a sci-fi thriller with nary a joke to be found. Which is fine, of course. But I get the impression that he had lingering doubts about that decision, and his uncertainty shows in the final product.

Danny Eisenberg is a 2010 graduate of the Bromfield School and is currently a student at the University of Pennsylvania.