Childhood buddies Darren (Biggs), Wayne (Zahn) and JD (Black) have a history of under-achieving.

At school Wayne was permanently on the football reserve bench, JD rose to the dizzy heights of school mascot and Darren was the star cheerleader.

Strange, but nothing too amiss, you may think. However, we also find they enjoy donning sparkly shirts and rhinestone belts for their first love as a Neil Diamond tribute band.

This is before gorgeous but cold-hearted Judith (Peet) gets her manipulative claws into lovelorn Darren, ditching the band and his buddies in the process.

Wayne and JD aren't going to take this lying down, and so begins a series of ruses and stunts to rid Darren of Judith and return him to his rightful place on keyboards in Diamonds In The Rough.

A simple offer of Wayne's house to the ice queen gets short shrift and further appeals fall on deaf ears...so the pining pair decide to kidnap her and feign her death.

They figure that, with his fiancee out the way, Darren will fall for ex-cheerleading colleague Sandy (Amanda Detmer) - if he can catch her before she becomes a nun.

This is firmly in American Pie territory, with the humorous focus how gross Wayne and JD can get in their desperate bid to win their friend back.

The main players are goofy caricatures, with only Peet's Judith attempting anything interesting - the woman who knows what she wants - outside the normal frat-boy comedy rules.

It's all been done before. Well, everything but the whole cast joining Neil Diamond to belt out a classic from his glorious back-catalogue.

Dominic Bloch