I have the solution to the problem of why this movie doesn’t work: take out Jack Black’s character completely and you have a better than average film. His part is totally superfluous and adds, roughly, 15 minutes to the total runtime. Cut him and you’re under 120 minutes and the film makes a little more sense.

However, there are more problems with the film, such as Kate Winslet. Now, I will sit through any movie no matter how bad just to watch Kate Winslet but in this movie she is required to be, well, funny on occassion, and she just isn’t funny. It’s almost as painful watching her try to be funny as it is watching Jack Black try not to be funny.

And how long can we sit through close up after close up of Jude Law and Cameron Diaz, no matter how beautiful their chiseled visages may be, before we start to get bored? By my reckoning they could have cut another 15 minutes of Jude/Cameron close ups and then we might have had a movie on our hands.

But in the final analysis it really seems like something went horribly wrong in the editing room, and that is a shame.