by JOANNE LATIMER

Didn't the Coens already make this movie? Wasn't it called Intolerable Cruelty? Apparently we're getting another legal farce about love in the courtroom - need it or not. Where Intolerable Cruelty is stylized and fun, Laws of Attraction is shopworn and flat. Stay far away from this film, with its schoolyard antics and false bluster.

Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore play at being divorce attorneys. They're on opposing sides of a bitter case, of course. Can't their clients see that they're being represented by two excitable actors on hiatus from more fitting roles? Moore and Brosnan are dying for a tickle fight from the first scene. Their accidental, booze-assisted marriage is preposterous and Moore's reaction to the nuptials is over-wrought. Hand wringing isn't her forte. The childish and mean-spirited ethic in Laws is, well, lawless. The tit-for-tat sniping makes us question their status as adults, despite the over-40 age range of the actors and the film's (alleged) target market. We can shove that target market way up, to over 50, to people who didn't suffer through the Ross-marrying-Rachel-in-Vegas saga on Friends.

Then there's the film's Irish interlude. The entire cast and crew of Laws of Attraction picks up and heads to Ireland. For that, Brosnan should be ashamed of himself. We understand that he's Irish and wants to bring some work back home. His heart is in the right place. But the clichéd Paddy Whackery in the pub scenes does a disservice.

The biggest blow, however, is from director Peter Howitt. He brought us Sliding Doors, a bittersweet story about how people's random decisions change their lives in unexpected ways. Then he stank up theatres with Johnny English, and now slides even lower with Laws of Attraction. He slept-walked through Laws, maybe numbed by the script or afraid to interrupt his flashy lead actors while they were poking each other in the eye. We can imagine a host of reasons why Howitt got behind the project - money, exposure, favours, the Irish angle - but I cannot imagine why he didn't take a defibrillator to the script and spank his actors.

Laws of Attraction opens Friday, April 30

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