THE trouble with reviewing any gazillion-selling novel adaptation is that slagging it off will sound like sour grapes or just trying to be different.

THE trouble with reviewing any gazillion-selling novel adaptation is that slagging it off will sound like sour grapes or just trying to be different.

But THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE (15) - the follow-up to Swedish author Stieg Larsson's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - never quite cuts the mustard.

Maybe it's the change in director, maybe it's the usual second flick slump or maybe it's Mr Larsson's fault for a plot that seems to keep repeating itself. This time out everyone's favourite Goth girl Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) faces the ghosts of her past while being framed for a series of murders that are connected to a sex trafficking article being prepared for the magazine where investigative reporter Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) works.

The best reasons to see it are still Nyqvist and Rapace who are great in their roles - although Blomkvist is relegated coat holder this time as he follows in Salander's footsteps - but the fact they spend the entire film apart destroys the first film's winning emotional centre.

No one else is that interesting and while the story has some thrilling moments (car chases and punch ups), it too often falls into the lazy formula of e-mail/meeting with character with vital plot/repeat.

It's entertaining enough and fans will lap it up but the uninitiated may find it wearing a little thin after more than two hours.