There's something disconcerting about a movie which is officially pitched at 10 to 13-year-old girls yet also manages to tie in its release with a perfume launch.

Yet cynical manipulation of tweenie pester power is not the worst thing about this cloyingly materialist celebration of smugly moneyed lifestyles. No. It's everything else.

The Duffs play a couple of shallow socialites, the daughters of a dead mascara mogul, whose lives revolve round queue-jumping at happening clubs and fiddling around with the functions on expensive mobile phones. They're vile.

So when their label-obsessed little world crumbles around their designer-clad feet it's a cause of raucous celebration. Well, not, actually.

No, we're invited to sympathise with these vacuous simpletons as they launch their own dim-witted probe into allegations that their company's mascara burns your face off.

This is not good at all. As comediennes, the Duffs have Heinrich Himmler's gift for humour and watching their performance is like standing vigil as a loved one slips slowly away.

Hilary Duff's wardrobe - oversized flat cap and silk camisole - seems to have been suggested by Worzel Gummidge's stylist.

Insultingly unambitious, it's appallingly acted, direly scripted and the plot wouldn't support a creation by milliner-to-the-stars Philips Treacy.

"Things can't get any worse," chirps one of the cheeky girls in the worst prediction since Michael Fish forecast a quiet night.

Of course they do. But who cares...as long as the perfume sells.

Duff and duffer.

Tim Evans