Jennifer Lopez is at full tilt in Argentine prison musical

I hate musicals” is a line that could clearly only appear in one, before the speaker learns how wrong they are. It duly arrives early in Kiss of the Spider Woman, the new adaptation of a story that has now had many lives.

At first, there was the 1976 novel by Manuel Puig, set in a brutal Argentine prison while the country’s military junta was still in power.

Then came the 1985 movie, relocated to Brazil; actor William Hurt won an Oscar playing the gay cellmate of a leftist radical. By 1993, a hit Broadway show had opened, filled with song and dance.

Now that version has morphed back into a second film, directed by Bill Condon with a headline role for Jennifer Lopez.

Common to all is the central drama of political prisoner Valentín Arregui (Diego Luna) and high camp fellow inmate Luis Molina (Tonatiuh), convicted of “public indecency”. Closely confined, they

begin worlds apart, mutually exclusive devotees of Lenin and the strong women of old Hollywood. Soon, though, they will be bonded by the torments of the jail — and shared escape into Luis’ memories of a favourite movie, the blockbuster musical of the title, which Condon brings to life with Lopez in the lead.

Half a century after Puig’s novel, the secret of the story’s enduring success is no secret at all. Luis is a great role for the right performer. (The mononymous Tonatiuh is very good.) And the plot is still a vessel for big ideas about love and sacrifice — the stuff of musical fantasias, and sometimes, on a quieter level, life.

But time has also been the death of nuance. Last time round on screen, the relationship between Luis and Valentin had to overcome dense tangles of ulterior motives — the film that bewitched Luis was a piece of Nazi propaganda. Now, such complexity has been chased away.

The other snag is more unexpected. Condon once made gold-standard Broadway adaptations in Chicago and Dreamgirls. Here the musical sequences are lavish but lifeless, even with Lopez at full tilt. It is hard to picture hating this Kiss of the Spider Woman — harder still to imagine being moved by it.