Everything about this commercial screams "LARGE!" in capital letters as tall as the Hollywood sign. The budget for the campaign was a whopping 5m. That kind of money would keep Ireland's entire community of independent filmmakers in production for a year.

Every cent of it is up there on screen. Hordes of people . . . in reality about 200, inflated to 100 times that number by the magic of CGI . . . traverse the rugged, striking landscapes of Wicklow and Kerry in a lemming-like journey, united by a common purpose.

Thousands more swarm through the streets of a remarkably traffic-free Dublin with only a lone garda standing King Canute-like in their path.

They eventually reach their destination, a beach on the west coast, and watch enraptured as a golfer hits a ball across the Atlantic.

Meanwhile, over in New York (we know we're in New York because the city is introduced with one of those spectacular overhead tracking shots of skyscraper roofs familiar from a host of movies) another golfer is teeing up on the roof of a building to hit a ball back the other direction.

Like his compatriot on the other side of the world, he's surrounded by a crowd while what seems like the remaining population of the Big Apple teem like ants through the streets below.

'Epic', conceived by the McConnell agency and directed by Donegal-born Enda McCallion, who's helmed videos for the likes of Nine Inch Nails, is TV advertising on a. . . well, an epic scale.

Nothing has been spared in its making: not money, not care . . . the CGI effects come courtesy of a French company that worked on big-budget movies such as Batman Begins and a specially re-recorded, full orchestral of Clint Mansell's 'Summer Overture' was commissioned for the soundtrack . . . and certainly not time.

The overall shoot took six days; most TV series episodes are wrapped up in less than that. At one point Dublin city centre was closed to traffic for a few hours so those CGIenhanced golf fans could march through it.

Never have so many technical resources and filmmaking skills been enlisted in the service of making a very big commercial about a game involving a very small ball.

'Epic' has pretty much everything you could want from an ad . . . colour, spectacle and visual flair . . .

and the chances of it not cleaning up when the time comes for the advertising industry to hand out its annual gongs are about as likely as Tiger Woods missing a two-inch putt.

What's conspicuously lacking, however, is anything resembling a point. Beyond its own flashiness, what exactly is 'Epic' supposed to be advertising? The Ryder Cup or the AIB's involvement with it? It's difficult to know.

Jim Kelly, AIB's sponsorship manager, has said: "It's an epic contest and that's what we wanted to get across. I think people haven't fully realised yet just how big this event is going to be."

Sorry, Jim, but I think they have, and by the time September comes they may well be sick and tired of being told that size is everything. 'Epic' is epic in scale, epic in sweep but minuscule in message.