At its best, The Mystic Masseur is like a tall tale that grows more beguiling and credible the taller it gets.

The movie benefits tremendously from its source: V.S. Naipaul's novel about an improbable author-masseur who becomes a popular leader of Trinidad's Indian population in the '40s and '50s. Naipaul's hero Ganesh (Aasif Mandvi) embodies the evolution of a burgeoning subculture, and Naipaul etches his rise and fall with Dickensian exuberance and keen ironical control. Ganesh follows a course of conventional colonial advancement - he starts out teaching at a school in Trinidad's Port of Spain - then retreats to the country upon his father's death and breaks out on his own as the writer of works like A Hundred And One Questions and Answers on the Hindu Religion. To support his early efforts, he takes up the family trade of masseur, which to the Indians of Trinidad also means healer and wise man.

In the movie, Ganesh's ascent - from purchasing every volume in the Everyman Library to curing a racing cyclist - catalyzes the juiciest kind of social comedy. The details are hilariously local and touchingly universal: they flesh out a people's simultaneous urge for knowledge and for magic.

Near the center of the action is a general-store-owning rogue named Ramlogan, who engineers the marriage of his daughter Leela (Ayesha Dharker) to Ganesh. Despite their initial rift over Ganesh neglecting her so he can read and write, Leela is what her husband needs: a stable connection to the earth. And as played by Om Puri, Ramlogan is what the movie needs: a wild card, a slick buffoon with a risky streak.

Mandvi gives Ganesh enough gumption to stand toe-to-toe with Puri's Ramlogan and sufficient brains and charisma to justify his tumultuous fame. But the movie's charm wears out before the actors' does. Although screenwriter Caryl Phillips has done a clever job of re-arrangement and compression, director Ismail Merchant has staged it all in the manner of a jolly, robust folk tale. His lack of Naipaul's droll finesse undercuts the comedy.

When Ganesh's increasing political ambitions compel him to take on leaders of the Hindu Association and enter the colonial government, his victories are too conventionally rousing. Similarly, his dinner at the British Governor's house is too pathetic, his attempt to appease strikers too humiliating.

Ganesh is a character of such irresistible appetites, a director needn't sweat to make an audience love him for his achievements or forgive him for over-reaching. The novel never loses its lightness; the movie becomes unbearably heavy.

The Mystic Masseur

Starring Aasif Mandvi and Om Puri

Directed by Ismail Merchant

Rated PG

Released by THINKFilm

Running time 117 minutes

Sun score: **1/2