Words almost fail me after watching this terrible romantic comedy from Griffin Dunne which is perilously described as a "sort of Carole Lombard screwball comedy". Would that it were.

Uma Thurman, who produced, too, plays the Lombard role of Dr Emma Lloyd, a New York radio DJ dispensing practical advice to the lovelorn, although she's totally unable to keep her own romancing in any kind of order.

She is due to be married to Richard (Colin Firth), her well-off and dependable fiancé, but suddenly makes the discovery that City Hall records have her down as already married.

This bureaucratic foul-up can't apparently be rectified and it is made all the worse when she meets Jeffrey Dean Morgan's fireman, who has come to her for advice after a jilting.

Of course, they fall for one another and it leaves Firth with one of those awful parts he must now be familiar with - the gentlemanly lover who lets the girl go.

Thurman plays the so-called comedy for all it is worth and sometimes considerably more, as if Pulp Fiction and Tarantino were but distant and happier memories.

Morgan looks like a bit of boring rough trade to me. Sam Shepard, Isabella Rossellini and Lindsay Sloane are also in the cast but are left floundering as the clichés mount.

There's a nice Bollywood song by AH Rahman over the end credits - and this really looks like a bad Bollywood movie without the songs. Carole Lombard would have had a fit.