All talk, no action

If you could not get - or afford - Hugh Grant, you should not make Hope Springs with Colin Firth. He plays Colin Ware, an English illustrator who has been jilted and is trying to mend a broken heart.

Colin comes to the New England hamlet of Hope Springs (get it?), where everyone takes pity on him, especially Mandy (Heather Graham).

Her occupation is "caregiver", but her propensities are those of a maneater. She soon has him standing in nothing but his shirt, though even here Firth looks as if the starch is still in it. But the whole film, written and directed by Mark Herman, feels like watching concrete set.

Firth has trouble with the self-deprecating one-liners that Grant could have knocked off with a shake of his forelock. He is not a mobile actor - if anything, he's a stabile.

In this film, people use Colin for target practice. When Vera (Minnie Driver), his ex-fiancée, shows up determined to reclaim her man, she proves a ball-breaker and chainsmoker in one.

It is pretty clear who is going to win Colin - not that it's remotely interesting. Certainly not as interesting as how the newly reconfigured Minnie Driver looks. She has dieted away those chipmunk cheeks of hers, but the result gives her the alarmingly unsympathetic features of a flint axe-head.

Everyone talks, talks, talks: nobody does anything - or anything much. There are two running jokes: one about Colin not wearing underpants; the other about Vera continually lighting up and getting ordered to "butt out".

Are these gags intended to be anti-British or anti-American? At the sixth repetition, they are certainly anti-funny. Oliver Platt's bumptious mayor steals any scenes worth stealing - not many.

Hope Springs
Cert: cert12A