"I think I'd miss you even if we'd never met," smouldering gigolo Dermot Mulroney rather nonsensically informs smitten Debra Messing.

It's with lines like these that you really wonder whether Messing's messed up by spending all her hard-earned cash on someone who talks drivel.

He's been hired for $6,000 to accompany New York thirty-something Kat Ellis (Messing) to London for the society wedding of her sister.

The thing is that Kat's caddish old flame Jeffrey (Sheffield) is going to be there - and she wants heart-stopper Nick (Mulroney) to make him green with what might have been.

Nick kicks off in a businesslike fashion - impressing all the mums, enchanting the ladies and playing rounders up Primrose Hill with the lads.

However, after a drunken tumble with Kat in her father's boat, things move from the purely professional to something altogether outside their little arrangement.

This has all the ingredients of the Curtis classics Notting Hill and Four Weddings - the Yanks picking their way through the social minefield of British manners, uptight, upper class ninnies and even a potty-mouthed girlfriend.

But it doesn't have Curtis's confident directorial touch, his unfailing ear for a telling line and a decent gag and his sure way with a romantic plot.

There's also annoying mistakes - an American "Don't Walk" sign blinks outside Ye Olde Worlde Englishe Pubbe.

Mulroney glowers winningly enough but Messing is left high and dry with a script that suffers in comparison to the gems she's fed with in TV's Will & Grace.

That's not to say it doesn't have its moments... but they are too few and too far apart to hold the attention.

You may have to stand up the Wedding Date.

Tim Evans