Sickly November

Reeves and Theron waste their talents

By the BBC's Caroline Westbrook

Hot on the heels of Autumn In New York, which left you wondering why Winona Ryder and Richard Gere became involved, comes this tedious bit of triple-hankied fluff which similarly wastes the talents of its own central pairing.

A remake of a 1968 Anthony Newley movie (which was not very good to start with), Sweet November combines its romance with a moralistic plot we have all seen a million times before.

The notion of course, is that successful careers and materialism are bad, while frolicking on the beach with puppies, wearing dodgy sweatshirts and generally acting domesticated is far better.

Here Reeves is Nelson, a hard-edged ad exec - and why exactly are the people in films like this always in advertising? - who meets the kooky Sara (Theron, doing her best Meg Ryan impersonation) at driving school.

Reeves is unconvincing and Theron annoying

He soon finds himself the object of a bizarre offer from this quirky stranger - live with her for a month, as her boyfriend, and she guarantees to change his life for the better.

A reluctant Nelson goes along with the wacky scheme and soon finds himself swapping his slick suits and fast-paced San Franciscan lifestyle for Sara's altogether more laid-back way of life.

And guess what? Yes, pretty soon they are falling for each other and want the relationship to last beyond the month.

Except she has a secret - one which explains why she only keeps men around for a short period of time and why she has a locked bathroom cabinet containing more pills than your average high-street pharmacy.

What follows has all the hallmarks of something which might well have gone straight to video were it not for the presence of its two star names.

Cross-dressing

Reeves makes for an unconvincing romantic lead, while the normally delightful Theron is just plain annoying here.

Not really surprising given that her character is so calculatedly offbeat.

British actor Jason Isaacs, last seen massacring Mel Gibson's family in The Patriot, does inject a little bit of life into the movie.

He plays Sara's cross-dressing downstairs neighbour, but like so much else in this movie his fondness for frocks serves no actual purpose in the plot except to make it seem a bit more cute and clever than it really is.

It is certainly nice to look at, with some stunning shots of San Francisco punctuating the action.

But it has precious little else to recommend it, and merely serves to leave you pondering the waste of talent involved.

Sweet November is on release in the UK from 13 July