F1: The Movie is a stunning triumph… of product placement

Much-anticipated summer blockbuster F1: TheMovie has hit our screens, propelled by not only the star power of Brad Pitt but also the relentless marketing machine of Formula 1 racing.

Directed by Joseph Kosinski, who also helmed Top Gun: Maverick, at the very least,F1 is a spiritual callback to Tom Cruise's 1990 race-car film Days Of Thunder.

F1 itself is very much a standard sports movie. But is it any good? Well, yes and no.

You can certainly see where every bit of the reported NZ$300 million budget was spent, as the racing scenes are incredible on an IMAX screen.

Not only does it feature some truly impressive camera work, but does a great job of conveying the insanely wealthy, otherworldly environment that race-car driving operates within.

Unfortunately, you can also tell where money wasn’t spent.

The script relies heavily on clunky exposition and feels too complicated for non-race fans and probably too dumbed-down for petrolheads.

Not that that will stop them coming. Half the audience on F1: The Movie's first night were decked out in racing team gear, with the feedback from a few afterwards that they found it entertaining as long as you ignored some quite big motorsport oversights.

Most of all, watching F1: The Movie, you are constantly reminded of where a lot of its budget came from.

While product placement in movies isn't new, F1 takes it to new heights by making the title the sport’s company logo.

Then there’s the fact that the fictional APXGP racing team has real-life sponsors plastered over almost every single scene – not even Kerry Condon’s love-interest character is spared from being a human billboard.

So really, you have to go in knowing full well the corporate oversight and permissions that were granted before a clapper board even snapped shut. Still, it’s not the most egregious example of a sporting body shamelessly promoting itself through film, with FIFA’s hilarious failure taking the cake for lack of self-awareness.

F1 certainly doesn’t fall into that category.

Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes - a driver called back into the big time by his old friend Ruben Cervantes, played by Javier Bardem.

Their racing team is on the verge of getting sold due to poor results, so it’s up to Hayes to form a partnership with rookie driver Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) and overcome the odds to achieve a win before the end of the season.

While Bardem is clearly having a lot of fun delivering a scenery-chewing performance, the same can’t really be said for Pitt.

He is now so old he could conceivably be Liam Lawson’s grandfather, and not for the first time lately acts like a grumpy old man from start to finish - playing the same character he first workshopped in Fury and then perfected in Once Upon a Time In Hollywood.

Sonny Hayes is dripping with 'divorced dad' energy, much like Once Upon a Time’s Cliff Booth.

It’s the sort of image that middle-aged men want to see themselves as when they go to Ponsonby Road, a sort of latter-day John Wayne that can dish out commonsense wisdom and old-school charisma. Unfortunately, if you’re not Brad Pitt, it usually screams insecurity and mid-life crisis.

But even Pitt can’t escape Father Time. His eternally youthful appearance finally meets its match in the form of a racing helmet, the facial contortion of which makes him look every one of his 61 years.

F1 probably isn’t going to be remembered as a piece of cinematic brilliance, but it likely will be as a box office success. Its undeniably broad appeal and Pitt’s star power will send it north of the billion dollars it needs to make to turn a profit.

That doesn’t make it a bad movie; it’s certainly worth watching for the racing sequences alone, which will no doubt rack up millions of views once they are posted on social media.

Let’s just hope the next massively hyped star vehicle is a little less ham-fisted in its approach to corporate tie-ins.