First Night: Edward Scissorhands, Sadler's Wells, London

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.

You can't blame 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 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, we assume that the inventor is his grief-stricken father, but it still doesn't make sense.

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, both tacky and 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 scissorlike 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 stereotypes: the pom-pom cheerleaders, the repressed religious nuts, the family with political ambitions and toothpaste smiles.

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

As Edward, Sam Archer has the hardest task. He's weighed down by those scissor hands - and Bourne never finds a way to make them expressive. The heroine Kim, danced by Kerry Biggin, is even more blankly characterised. Bourne just hasn't given his dancers much to work with.