There's a lot of laughs to be had in this tale of a demure sales assistant who finds a joyous will to live...after being diagnosed with a terminal disease.

The trouble is they're all in the wrong place.

When you should be in damp-eyed sympathy with her deathly predicament it's difficult to suppress a guffaw while moments of contrived comedy clatter into a hushed void.

Bizarelly based on a screenplay by English literary giant JB Priestley, this cloying confection of cheap emotion and even cheaper gags pinballs all over the place.

It doesn't help that Queen Latifah - a decent supporting actress who's been jacked up to lead status - is cast as Georgia Byrd, a shy cookware sales assistant.

Now, Queen Latifah doesn't really do coy. In fact, when she's not hamming it up as a brassy big momma, she is to coy what Bernard Manning is to bashful.

When she's diagnosed with fatal Lampington's Disease and given three weeks to live, she decides to cash in and spend her last days in the luxury Czech resort of Karlovy Vary.

It's there at the swanky Grandhotel Pupp (ironic really, bearing in mind that's what we've been sold) that her hero, French chef Didier (Depardieu) holds sway in the kitchen.

With nothing to live for, Georgia throws her natural caution to the wind, ordering everything on the menu and embracing hazardous pursuits such as snowboarding and base-jumping.

She also attracts the attention of fellow guests, including laothsome self-help guru Tim Hutton, his PA-come-mistress and a shifty US senator in town to firm up a dodgy deal.

They think she's a millionaire socialite and hang on to her every wise word as she gives them lessons in common human decency, humility and fair play. Pass the sickbag.

Director Wayne Wang has nailed together a clodhopping comedy where the only genuine humour comes from the hotel's oddball Euro-staff, including Depardieu's chef who considers the turnip "the self-made woman of the vegetable world." Quite.

Last Holiday a decent comedy? Give me a break.

Tim Evans