This film has a promising First Act.<br /><br />After around 20 minutes, you begin to suspect that things will go wrong.<br /><br />Then they get much worse than that, they get terrible.<br /><br />The Third Act is in slow-motion, with nine too many plot twists and no pace at all. By this time you are clawing the stuffing out of your couch.<br /><br />I hate these people for having wasted a night out of my life.<br /><br />Dan Futterman, a kind of low-rent baby Richard Gere, plays the American the English love to hate - smug, glib, an updated version of "over-paid, over-sexed and over here." <br /><br />Stuart Townsend plays a shambling English wonk, good hearted and socially undeveloped. Hey, there's something new in films! <br /><br />Kate Beckinsale's charm is unable to salvage the proceedings, and she projects none of the intelligence one would hope to find in a budding doctor. Totally implausible. And there are some very good character actors who are completely wasted in unrewarding roles.<br /><br />I suspect the script was written using one of those screen writing software programs, as the characters, twists and paradoxes are all arbitrary, every single last blinking one of them. Including the blow-up dolls.<br /><br />If the Surgeon General's Office could place a Health Warning on this film, the world would be a safer place.<br /><br />I can't imagine where the positive reviews for this film originate - probably in a misplaced sense of charity. As Jay Sherman, of "The Critic," would say, "IT STINKS!"