`EXPECTATIONS' FAR FROM GREAT.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

Expectations, more often than not, lead to disappointment.

So, don't bring great ones to ``Great Expectations,'' the latest and flat-out goofiest film adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic novel. If you keep your hopes for the movie limited, however, there are some rewards to be had.

Alfonso Cuaron, the director of the consistently gorgeous (and much better) ``A Little Princess,'' has updated the Victorian material like an abstract expressionist might restore a Renaissance fresco. He aestheticizes the thing like mad, turning it into a woozy, very green swirl of elaborate sets (Tony Burrough, who did ``Richard III,'' was the production designer) and overwrought camera work (cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki also shot ``Princess'').

This is all very ravishing. So is Gwyneth Paltrow, who plays the film's Estella, both live and draped in uncharacteristically verdant Donna Karan and as the usually nude subject of Francesco Clemente's paintings.

But lovely pictures, even in a story that's now about an artist's progress, don't count for enough when the movie fails to engage emotionally. For a piece about consuming passion, ``Great Expectations'' remains frustratingly uninvolving.

Mitch Glazer's screenplay takes liberties with the text, to say the least. The early part is set on Florida's Gulf Coast in the 1980s. The Pip character, 10-year-old Finnegan Bell (Jeremy James Kissner), lives with his sister Maggie (Kim Dickens, presumably no relation) and her underemployed fisherman husband, Joe (``Lone Star's'' Chris Cooper).

Finn loves to draw fish, and one day an escaped convict (Robert De Niro, called Lustig instead of Magwitch) rises out of the brackish water to frighten but also inspire the little boy. Even more life-changing is a trip to the decrepit beach mansion of eccentric Ms. Dinsmoor (Anne Bancroft, laying on the loony rich mannerisms and ravaged old lady makeup with a backhoe). Constantly drunk and bitter over being left at the altar decades earlier, Dinsmoor introduces Finn to her beautiful, aloof niece Estella (Raquel Beaudene plays her as a child), and warns him that the girl will break his heart.

Which, of course, she does. Once they reach young adulthood, Finn (now played by Ethan Hawke) pines for his rich former playmate, who teases him to the point of distraction before leaving, unannounced, for New York. Shattered, Finn gives up art and throws himself into fishing, until years later a mystery benefactor sets him up as the next big thing on the Downtown Manhattan gallery scene.

Despite heady success, all Finn can think about is winning Estella, who now poses nude for him but is engaged to an equally befuddled Wall Street type (Hank Azaria). The situation fizzles along, sensually but inconclusively, from there.

The film's main problem - for those who don't consider copious eroticism and profanity inappropriate for even the loosest interpretation of Dickens - is Hawke's performance.

He doesn't just play Finn as naive, he plays him as shell-shocked. The diffident lad appears unable to commit to anything but his tremblingly expressed obsession with Estella, but even that grows unconvincing in the overall framework of Hawke's noncommittal noodling. Particularly when Bancroft and De Niro are hamming it up all over him, Hawke makes Finn seem like the wimp Estella evidently believes him to be - but that we never should.

Paltrow does better as the manipulative but not entirely cruel temptress - she knows how to locate the humanity in a monstrously objectified character. ``Great Expectations'' works as a tribute to her allure and talent. It is, however, supposed to be a whole lot more.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Great Expectations'' (R; language, nudity, sex, violence).

The stars: Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, Robert De Niro, Anne Bancroft, Hank Azaria, Chris Cooper.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Alfonso Cuaron. Written by Mitch Glazer, based on Charles Dickens' novel. Produced by Art Linson. Released by 20th Century Fox.

Running time: One hour, 51 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Two and One Half Stars.

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Photo

Photo: Finnegan Bell (Jeremy James Kissner, left) is frightened but inspired by an escaped convict (Robert De Niro) in ``Great Expectations.''