In theaters

ALEXANDER, directed by Oliver Stone, written by Stone, Christopher Kyle, Laeta Kalogridis, 175 minutes, rated R.

It’s melodrama – not greatness – that drives the movie “Alexander,” Oliver Stone’s new epic based on the tumultuous life of Alexander the Great.

Whipped into a high, sudsy froth, the film charges through its three-hour running time like one of the doomed elephants that lumber through its climactic battle scene in India. It’s big, grand, messy.

In its stampede of excess – from its sweeping scenes of war to its high-strung performances by an eager and misinformed cast, depth is lost in favor of satisfying the necessities of a big budget blockbuster. Violence, sex and action take precedence over substance. Working from a script he co-wrote with Christopher Kyle and Laeta Kalogridis, Stone lifts “Alexander” to a higher plane, for sure, but not one that comes close to the heaven he’d like to achieve. This is camp filmmaking that exists on the surface, with none of the characters given more dimension than, say, SpongeBob SquarePants in the new movie about his tumultuous life.

That’s one of the reasons “Alexander” is such cheap fun. If you come to it expecting a serious, well-acted biopic, you might leave seriously disappointed. But if you enjoy a nice slice of Hollywood miscalculation every now and then, and who doesn’t, you might have a good time. As Alexander, the Macedonian king who conquered much of the civilized world through a series of wars during the Hellenistic Age, Colin Farrell sports harsh, dishwater blonde locks, a furrowed brow and a toga, and he tries to make the best of it. It’s a struggle. Throughout, his Alexander remains a conflicted enigma, so torn in so many directions, it’s a wonder he doesn’t tear apart.

His parents are problematic. There’s his father, Philip, brutal, jealous, controlling, with a bum eye, who is played by Val Kilmer in the sort of overheated performance that suggests he was left out too long in the sun between takes.

He’s delirious.

There’s Alexander’s mother, Olympias (Angelina Jolie), who is never without a snake slithering somewhere on her body and who is so powerful in her hold over Alexander, she makes Philip look like a kindergarten pushover.

With her big hair and smoky eyes, Jolie is made to look like a Cosmo cover girl from the 1980s. She doesn’t speak with a Greek accent. Instead, in one of the film’s more bizarre moves, it sounds as if she’s channeling Kate Beckinsale’s Transylvanian trick from “Van Helsing.”

Warming the marble is Alexander’s love life, which involves men and women. There’s his male lover, Hephaistion (Jared Leto), who enjoys only brief hugs during moments of Alexander’s deepest reflection, while Alexander’s Indian wife, Roxane (Rosario Dawson), enjoys the sort of aggressive sex that suggests Alexander (or Farrell) is overcompensating.

Toward the end, when the movie slumps into a chronological mess that even its narrator, Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins), can’t navigate, you begin to guage where you are in the plot by the length of Alexander’s hair. If it’s a short, curly puff, he’s still relatively new to the job as king. If it just brushes his shoulders, he’s growing wary of his responsibilities. If it’s cascading down his back in a dry tumble of frizzy curls, let’s just say the end is near in many ways.

It’s in the battle scenes that Stone finds the backbone of his picture. All are impressively mounted, filmed with such a ransacked air of mortal confusion, Stone makes you feel the lottery of battle, the fear and the exhilaration in the fight.

Individual scenes also are compelling, such as when young Alexander, nicely played by Connor Paolo, calms his new horse, Bucephalus, which would be with him almost until his death. A bond is achieved between them that is real and touching. It transcends the camp and it says plenty about the movie’s real shortcoming.

Try as he may, Stone is unable to make you care for any character, including Alexander, more than he makes you care for that horse.

Grade: C

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, 5:30 p.m. Thursdays on WLBZ 2 Bangor and WCSH 6 Portland, and are archived at RottenTomatoes.com. He may be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.