Lessons in Love

Also known as How to Make Love like an Englishman and Some Kind of Beautiful, this amalgam of romantic comedy clichés is so dismal that it almost distracts from the smug chauvinism and offensive misanthropy that marbles Matthew Newman's execrable script. At its heart is Pierce Brosnan, as a Cambridge poetry professor who relocates to Malibu after getting student Jessica Alba pregnant and then takes a tilt at her older sister, Salma Hayek, when she is cuckolded by dullard Ben McKenzie. But, just when you think things can't get any worse, Brosnan's womanising father, Malcolm McDowell, arrives to drag this farrago to new lows. It says much that scenes of public urination and simulated orgasm are respectively pitched as quaint and hilariously original. Reuniting after Brett Ratner's 2004 comic caper After the Sunset, Brosnan and Hayek lack chemistry. But their reluctance to put much effort into a joyless mess, directed by Tom Vaughan without a shred of finesse, is perhaps understandable.