The Oxford Murders is so unbelievably bad that you’ll want to pull other people into the room to show them how ridiculous it is. There’s a sex scene that involves spaghetti. A school bus of mentally-challenged kids singing “Frère Jacques," which is then hijacked in a high-speed chase set to dramatic music. Characters routinely wield cell phones like bricks, as the film is set inexplicitly in 1993 (although, besides the phones, there is nothing to suggest we are a decade and a half in the past). And then the dialogue, which must have looked silly on the page, that is either delivered with astonished sincerity or mad fury, each actor choosing a pitch and not adjusting for the scene or for the other actors, so that we have a handful of people yelling their lines with nutty glee, and the other half answering back with meek curiosity. It is not a comedy.

The plot of The Oxford Murders is a murder mystery, part Da Vinci Code, part Sherlock Holmes, and part Hitchcock; but written with such leaps of logic, misplaced energy, and stilted dialogue that it feels as if it were written by a teenager, while drunk, who didn’t speak a word of English, and used a free online translator to approximate his meanings. It’s set in Oxford, in 1993, when Martin, a graduate student (Elijah Wood), moves in with an old woman (Anna Massey) and her young daughter (Julie Cox) to be close to his idol, the Wittgenstein scholar Arthur Seldom (John Hurt), but ends up entangled in a series of murders that begins with the old woman he's boarding with. Martin and Seldom must work together, using the clues left behind at each murder, to try to deduce (and defeat) the culprit.

It’s never really explained how either Martin or Seldom are convinced there is a serial killer that must be caught in the first place (as they know this immediately after one murder), or why the police inspector (Jim Carter) would allow them a behind-the-scenes pass to all the evidence when they themselves are the chief suspects, but the two sleuths have plenty of philosophical debates along the way. None of these debates have more insight than a Wikipedia entry, and – for two characters that are supposed to be mathematical and philosophical geniuses – these debates don’t ever seem to be as useful in getting to the truth as wild, old-fashioned chase scenes, one on a rooftop (in masquerade, no less), and one on a highway.

The Oxford Murders tries very hard to impress us, resorting to such tools as an incredibly long shot that winds around the streets of Oxford – but the film cheats, and this long shot is rather obviously a number of shots strung together for heightened effect. But what effect? It seems like a waste of energy. The music and cinematography are much too dramatic for the clunky dialogue and cartoonish events, and do nothing more but point out the discrepancy between what we were meant to feel, and what we aren’t. Elijah Wood lacks character; if he would have been able to reach the ultra-dramatic cheese that his costars ooze, The Oxford Murders might have been a contender for a Bad Movie Night marathon. Someone like Nicholas Cage would have been perfect. But Elijah doesn’t seem in on the joke, and is disappointingly mild, even when running into people and knocking their papers into the wind – twice. He also answers the question of why Frodo never had a love scene: Elijah doesn't kiss so much as try to literally devour his lover, a buxom love interest (Leonor Watling) who also has the hots for John Hurt's character. This devouring also happens twice, the second time Elijah's hunger only placated by a fistful of spaghetti (Images 13 to 16).

The Oxford Murders is a ridiculous film with equally ridiculous performances, over-the-top cinematography, and inappropriate music. I’d recommend a potential viewer to watch it drunk, but it would be wiser not to watch it at all.