Lately, pre-existing IP has been a key ticket to getting almost anything greenlit. The unprecedented success of Barbie loosened the floodgates, becoming a catalyst for films and TV shows based on games, dolls and cartoon classics from The Last Of Us to A Minecraft Movie. It’s only logical that F1: The Movie, based on the Formula One racing brand, would eventually follow, and it’s a decently gripping cinematic effort.

In F1, Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a down-on-his-luck Formula One driver who raced in the 90s, but a severe crash forced him to retire and start pursuing other disciplines. Cut to the present day and he’s recruited by Ruben (Javier Bardem) to join his struggling F1 team and mentor hotshot rookie Joshua “Noah” Pearce (Damson Idris). Cue explosive racing scenes that rattle around neatly on the IMAX screen.

Since winning his long-awaited acting Oscar, Pitt seems to have got busy shaping the most eclectic mishmash of a career imaginable. His recent producing credits read like a cinephile’s random title generator, from a Bob Marley biopic, Netflix’s 3 Body Problem, the Beetlejuice sequel to Adolescence, among acting stints in high-octane crowd pleasers like Bullet Train. He can do what he wants, and Apple, the main studio backing this, have clearly lobbed the kitchen sink at him here. Fortunately, with Pitt in the lead, it’s an entertaining 2.5 hours (excessive runtime aside).

Director Joseph Kosinski sensibly shifts away from the neon absurdity of the Fast and the Furious series and offers up characters you actually care for. His cameras, with cinematographer Claudio Miranda, swoop and hover about the racetracks in a way that’s both engaging and dexterously framed. The supporting cast provide some great bolstering too – Damson Idris builds on his Snowfall reputation as a very capable actor, it’s always welcome seeing Samson Kayo show up in anything, and Ted Lasso’s Sarah Niles as Noah’s mother, injecting gravitas into every scene she’s in. The weakest element here is the script, which follows a very tried-and-tested formula: the old hand teaching the young protégé, without ever trying to boost it with a more unique spin. True, it’s hard to find purely original storytelling in most mediums these days, but the dialogue feels coldly predictable, the emotional beats borrowed, and a few plot points are teased that go nowhere. In one scene **spoiler**, a character is in a fiery crash that looks impossible to survive. Sure enough, he escapes this explosive collision with a slightly damaged hand. Raise those stakes! You could have gone full Million Dollar Baby there.

Apple is clearly a company with money to burn and, burn it they do. Their intention is clearly to appeal to as wide a demographic as possible, so making a movie about Formula One feels a fitting approach, given the opportunity to leap between geographic locations like Bond with a multi-destination ticket. One moment, Pitt is funnelling his way to Heathrow, the next we’re at a race in Japan, coming to a climax in Abu Dhabi. The extensive product placement, however, likely a key source of the film’s funding, gets wearisome, since you can’t go five minutes without being presented with yet another brand. Did you know Heineken make alcohol-free beer? I do, because the movie told me seven or eight times in its 2.5 hour runtime.

Ultimately, F1: The Movie is enjoyable – a gleaming, high-speed distraction whose success will likely hinge on its audience’s existing affection for Formula One and/or choreographed race scenes. But for all its horsepower, it’s very cookie-cutter. Contrast it with Greta Gerwig’s Barbie adaptation, which proved a wider audience would watch a pre-existing IP project if its execution was especially creative and accessible. “If you love Barbie, this movie is for you. If you hate Barbie, this movie is for you!” proclaimed the trailer. Quite viably, the only people tuning into F1: The Movie are people who already like F1. It’s a visually impressive theatrical experience but its thin plot doesn’t justify that runtime. I await a sequel called F1 2...

F1: The Movie is in UK and Irish cinemas now