Peter O’Toole deserves an Academy Award. After being denied a record seven times—he did reluctantly accept an honourary Oscar in 2003—the English dynamo stands an excellent chance of winning this year, for his tour de force performance in Roger Michell’s Venus. Unfortunately, leaden pacing, a shaky performance from co-star Jodie Whittaker, and Hanif Kureishi’s wildly inconsistent script mean that the film for which the legend may finally take home a trophy won’t be among his most memorable.

O’Toole plays Maurice, an aging actor struggling with the loss of his physical and spiritual virility. Resigned to playing corpses in woeful TV dramas and analyzing the obituaries of past colleagues with his old acting pal Ian (English screen stalwart Leslie Philips), Maurice yearns for the vigour of his youth. (Venus is, in many ways, about O’Toole himself, and indeed his whole generation of thespians, most of whom have seen their bright stars fade, if not go out altogether.) Maurice ultimately latches on to Jessie (Whittaker), Ian’s crass, young northern grandniece. She’s been sent to London to look after Ian, but seems more interested in slurping up instant noodles on the sofa and waiting for her big modelling break. With long forgotten passions stirring in his cobwebbed loins, Maurice decides he’s going to show Jessie the town.

In light of the success of Michell and Kureishi’s The Mother (2003), which examined the nuanced sexual relationship between a grandmother (Anne Reid) and the man bedding her daughter (Daniel Craig), Venus’s premise seems promising. Unfortunately, the moment Jessie walks onscreen, the film slides off the rails. The girl lacks both the physical and intellectual attractiveness to warrant the hilarious and disarming charm-offensive Maurice unleashes.

The creators strive to suggest that the relationship between Maurice and Jessie develops gradually, but the film communicates this only through a rapid sequence of snapshot scenes that never grant the relationship the space necessary for such development. And O’Toole is weighed down by Kureishi’s insistence that he see Jessie as a living incarnation of Venus. Not only does Maurice drag Jessie to see Velasquez’s painting Toilet of Venus, but thereafter he insists on making the goddess’ name the girl’s new moniker. This does nothing but augur the codger’s senility and creeping blindness.

That doesn’t mean that Venus isn’t worth seeing. O’Toole’s few scenes with a virtually unrecognizable Vanessa Redgrave, who plays his ex-wife, are gorgeously honest and heartbreakingly funny. The scenes of Odd Couple–style repartee between him and Philips are magnificent as well. Near the film’s conclusion, with prostate cancer bringing Maurice closer to death’s door, he and Ian visit the “Actor’s Church” (St. Paul’s) in Covent Garden, where they read out the names of departed friends inscribed on its sanctuary wall. It’s a potent scene, suggesting that Venus is very much a eulogy for the spunk, skill and epicurean habits of the golden age of British stage and screen. And while it’s a eulogy that’s often touching and intelligent, the actor it both celebrates and mourns deserves better.

Venus is now playing at The Cumberland (159 Cumberland St.).