Jersey Girl

Just when you thought - nay prayed - that you'd seen the last of them, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck turn up in Kevin Smith's Jersey Girl, the second and hopefully final film they ever make together. The good news is that it's better than the car crash that was Gigli. The bad news? It was a close call.

Affleck plays Ollie Trinkle (there's a name), a slick New York music publicist with a career and life in the fast line. When his girl (a loved up Jennifer Lopez) gets pregnant and dies in childbirth, it's up to lunkhead, sorry, Ollie, to try and manage his career and fatherhood. Cut to several years later and Ollie's back living with his old man (George Carlin) and his cutesy daughter (Raquel Castro) in New Jersey. A romance with a local video store clerk (Liv Tyler) threatens to change his humdrum existence round, but so does the promise of a new start.

A director who has never seemed to capitalise on the promise shown in his debut, Clerks, Kevin Smith made all sorts of excuses before Jersey Girl was released, portraying his film as the unfortunate loser in the negative backlash of the 'Bennifer' union. The truth is far closer to home - his script rarely arches out of the ponderously predictable and even when it does, Smith never emotes real feeling. Affleck's about as charismatic as you'd expect - which isn't very - while the bulk of Liv Tyler's concentration seems to be spent remembering her lines. There are a couple of decent gags, but Smith appears to be a filmmaker fast running out of things to say for himself.