Edward Scissorhands, Sadler's Wells, London <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

Matthew Bourne is one of the most popular choreographers of all time. He's still most celebrated for his Swan Lake with male swans, but plenty of other hits - dance shows and musicals - have followed. Yet his new Edward Scissorhands, which opened at Sadler's Wells with a celebrity audience, feels like Bourne-by-numbers, familiar characters or devices that have suffered a fatal loss of energy.

It can't be lack of enthusiasm for the material. Bourne has said how much he loves Tim Burton's movie, made in 1990 with Johnny Depp in the title role. The new stage version was first suggested seven years ago. Bourne is usually a natural storyteller, and he's had plenty of time to iron out the bugs in his narrative.

What narrative? The plot limps along. A new prologue sets out to explain why an inventor chose to create Edward, the boy with scissors for hands. Well, we see a real boy playing with scissors and getting struck by lightning, and assume that the inventor is his grief-stricken father, but it still doesn't make sense. The rest of the story line is blurred. Bourne drops sections of the film that depends on speech, but finds little to replace them. Major plot points are hard to follow.

Most important, this show gets the scissors wrong. As Edward, Sam Archer is weighed down by his scissor hands, a set of shears for each finger. Bourne never finds a way to make them expressive. Edward recoils from other characters, afraid of cutting them; the next minute, he gets his own hand stuck between his legs, without apparent ill effect.

When his inventor father dies - or, in this stage version, is frightened to death by vicious trick-or-treaters - Edward ends up in suburbia. In the film, Burton's dotty visuals conjured up a frilled, pastel world, tacky but strangely sweet-natured. Lez Brotherston, Bourne's regular collaborator, has cleverly transferred that neighbourhood to the stage. There are rows of little model houses, with front doors just big enough for the cast to climb through. Green hedges are spiky with scissor-like leaves, until clipped into topiary by our hero. But the sweetness has gone.

Perhaps Bourne is just uncomfortable with American material. In Play without Words, his last all-dance show, he conjured up a whole series of Swinging London types. They were stylised but brilliantly observed, each pose showing surface and underlying needs. The Scissorhands characters are flat caricatures: the pom-pom cheerleaders; the repressed religious nuts; the family with political ambitions and toothpaste smiles. The heroine, Kim, danced by Kerry Biggin, is blankly characterised. Scott Ambler and Etta Murfitt, Bourne regulars, make surprisingly little impact as her parents, the kindly couple who take Edward in. They just don't have much to work with.

If these stereotypes lack vitality, so does the choreography. We keep seeing the full cast bustling through life - the daily routine, with celebrations for Hallowe'en and Christmas. Bourne's company remains lively, and the dancers act with their whole bodies, really putting their backs into each gesture. But they can't lift the slackly timed, repetitive numbers. The music, arranged by Terry Davies, but based on the film soundtrack, is no help.

Bourne's most ambitious scene comes at the end of the first half. Falling in love with Kim, he leads her into a dream sequence, his topiary figures dancing around them. It's a vision scene, that staple of 19th-century ballet, but Bourne doesn't have the steps to sustain it. It's a pure dance scene without enough dancing.

Bourne's style has always been more about drama and timing than steps. It's choreographed body language, with everyday behaviour built into stylised routines. We know from other shows that Bourne can make those routines witty, and that he can use them to show his characters' inner lives. Not this time.

To 5 February (0870 737 7737). A version of this review has already run in some editions