ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE MIDLANDS [ 1/2]

The good, the bad and the lovely. Running time: 104 minutes. Rated R (language). At the Clearview First and 62nd Street and the Angelika.

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NO, Sergio Leone didn’t come back to life and move to Nottingham.

“Once Upon a Time in the Midlands” is just Brit filmmaker Shane Meadows having some fun with the conventions of the spaghetti western.

The story – a high-noon showdown between good guy and bad for the hand of a damsel – suits the genre, even as the setting, a bleak tract of working-class England, puts a droll spin on it.

Meadows wisely uses a light hand in drawing parallels, via a comically incongruous soundtrack.

Co-written by Meadows (“TwentyFourSeven,” “A Room for Romeo Brass”) and Paul Fraser, “Midlands” opens with the nerdy, stoop-shouldered Dek (Rhys Ifans) being humiliated before the nation when his live-in love, Shirley (breathy-voiced waif Shirley Henderson), turns down his marriage proposal on daytime TV.

Watching this spectacle from the badlands of Glasgow is the villain of the piece – Shirley’s former love, Jimmy (Robert Carlyle), a sexy small-time crook with a foul mouth and a scoundrel’s charm.

He abandoned Shirley and their daughter, Marlene (12-year-old Finn Atkins, making her debut), three years before, but now Jimmy sets off for Nottingham to try to win her back.

Meadows does a fine job of illuminating Shirley’s dilemma of choice, between the dangerous allure of the immature Jimmy and the hopelessly devoted Dek, who has become a dependable father figure to Marlene.

Occasionally, however, the blight that accompanies a broken home – seen in the eyes of the solemn Marlene – sits uneasily with the broad, sitcom-y comedy.

Ifans’ sniveling strains our sympathies, but the supporting cast is terrific, particularly British TV stars Kathy Burke and Ricky Tomlinson.