Jobless, hungry, covered in mud and fresh out of jail: Ashley Allbright (Lohan) cuts a sorry figure. She has the sympathy of Jake Hardin (Pine, Princess Diaries 2), a former bowling alley attendant whose life is on the upswing.

It wasn't always like this. When we meet Ashley, she is the luckiest girl in New York. She never has to wait for a taxi, every scratch-card is a winner, and while her workmates are stuck in a lift, she's arranging a date with the city's most eligible bachelor.

She's the sort of girl who rents a cavernous apartment and wears Versace and Valentino while her similarly salaried friends live in a shoebox and dress in clobber from charity shops.

The latter deserve it as they are utterly insufferable.

Jake, meanwhile, is Ashley's exact opposite. His calamitous existence is a conspiracy of big puddles, falling trousers and cash-wrapped dog poo.

Strangely, the poptastic Brit-band McFly – making their second screen appearance after a spot on Casualty and looking to make their mark Stateside – have put their success in the hands of this abject loser.

As luck would have it, Jake crashes a glitzy PR party organised by Ashley so that he can give McFly's demo to music mogul Damon Philips (Faison Love). He is sidetracked by a fateful kiss with Ashley on the dancefloor.

Things immediately change. Jake saves Damon's life and Ashley is arrested. Turns out the date she procured for her boss (Missi Pyle, Dodgeball) is a Latino gigolo (played by the fittingly named Carlos Ponce).

Only it's not Ashley's luck that evaporates, it's her IQ.

What do you expect when you bad-mouth art at an art exhibition, hang your hairdryer over the bath, pick fights in jail cells, mess with wiring at heights or overload shelves above glass cabinets?

Jake's reversal of fortune coincides with the unexplained disappearance of his nerdy specs. It's a Clark Kent-to-Superman makeover as unimaginative as the rest of this bubble-headed venture.

"When they whacked you with the lucky stick, they whacked you good," says one of Ashley's friends. Pity they missed the rest of us.

Elliott Noble