Kate & Leopold

Never exactly noted for her dazzling breadth of range, Meg Ryan has apparently lost even the ability to sleepwalk through a straight romantic comedy.

Ostensibly a time-travel yarn, Kate & Leopold teams Ryan up with Aussie export Hugh Jackman, who plays the third Duke of Albany, magically transported from the 19th to the 21st century, only to slowly fall for Ryan’s unappealing, career-crazed advertising executive. Jackman essays the role in the manner of a Hugh Grant or Rupert Everett, playing up that olde-English, well-mannered twittishness which American audiences seem to find so irresistible. Though he undoubtedly tries hard and does what he does fairly well, the central romance is so heartily annoying that both parties are fighting a losing battle from the off.

Unforgivably lazy and trite, yet so delusionally sure of its epic romantic scope that it feels the need to stretch itself out to the full two-hour mark, Kate & Leopold simply can’t overcome its singular lack of charm.