Just Married review

It's a neat enough scenario. Rattle through a classic movieland romance (mismatched couple, loads of family strife, doubting friends, yadda, yadda, yadda...) as quickly as possible, then make the first few days of their `happy' marriage the meat of the film instead. Bright idea, yes? Shame that it's Just Married's only idea...

Once nobody Tom and rich-bitch Sarah (Ashton Kutcher and Brittany Murphy) hit Europe on their dream honeymoon, they fall straight into a National Lampoon's European Vacation-shaped vat of clichés. Every Frenchman is an effete snob, every German a morose know-it-all and every Italian a greasy lech. And guess what? They're all out to mess things up for narrow-minded Yankee boy Tom.

Someone like Seann William Scott might have managed to make this irritating git into some kind of lovable hero, but Kutcher (the other one from Dude, Where's My Car?) hasn't got a cat in hell's chance. As he sparks pointless arguments with the Reese Witherspoon-lite Murphy, audience sympathy for this dozy dickhead swiftly slips round the U-bend. Before too long, you're willing his clearly doomed marriage to end just so you can get out of the cinema faster.

Mind you, there are a few laughs to be had. The trouble is, for every guffaw there's a good grief, and for every yuk an attendant yuck, as it all dissolves into lazy, boring caricatures and weak-willed slapstick.