Courting disaster

Stinkaroo of the week is the supposed rom-com Laws of Attraction, which stars Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore as arch-rival divorce lawyers who travel to Ireland to investigate a case, get married on a whim, and then later fall in love.

Surely the first law of attraction is that Pierce Brosnan isn't. This is the man who turned James Bond into the kind of guy who owns a juicer.

There is something so doggedly jaunty about Brosnan when he is in Remington Steele mode: he thinks that all he needs to do to be funny is to lift the tone of his voice. You get the feeling that he has absolutely no sense of humour.

And Moore spends most of her time with her teeth bared in that little snarl of hers that passes for a smile - so very effective in the scene in Magnolia in which she berates the pharmacist for not giving her drugs without complaint, but rather alarming here. What a gruesome couple.

Poor Michael Sheen also appears, as a faithless English rock star who is trying to pay off his horrible wife (Parker Posey). Done up in kohl and leather, his black curls ironed and stiff with resin, he looks like he is on dayrelease from some 1980s production of Tartuffe.

With his successful Sliding Doors, Peter Howitt seemed the kind of director who might have been able to slip in sly jokes and editing tricks to keep even the silliest film's spirits up. Sadly, there is no evidence of that here.

Laws Of Attraction
Cert: cert12A