The good news is that Paris Hilton has a role in this film. The bad news is that it's not THAT performance and it's not THAT film.

Instead, it's a woeful romantic comedy from Garry "Pretty Woman" Marshall - an ancient director who is to the zeitgeist what Stonehenge is to the microchip.

Kate Hudson plays Helen Harris, a fashion agent known more for her ability to jump club and restaurant queues than earn a decent day's living.

However, her life of vacuous privilege comes to an end when her sister and brother-in-law are killed in a car crash (a merciful early release for them).

Rather than Helen's other, momsy sister Jenny (Cusack) gaining custody, the will stipulates the three orphaned kiddies end up at Helen's trendy duplex doorstep.

There's 15-year-old teen-nightmare-in-waiting Audrey (Panettiere), 10-year-old Henry (Breslin - the fat kid you wanted to smack in Cat in the Hat) and cutesie five-year-old Sarah (Breslin's sister Abigail).

Anyone harbouring a lingering hope that this may be a Sound of Music's Von Trapp family type yarn relocated to Manhattan can take a hike in the Alps.

It's a dreadful, embarrassingly misjudged mess that appears rooted in the mid-Seventies with a script so lame it should be taken out and shot.

Hudson is all at sea with a character that doesn't exactly invite sympathy when she complains: "I've lost a sister, a social life and a disposable income."

Love interest John Corbett - an actor with a touch of the John Leslies about him - plays a hunky pastor who is, and I quote, "a sexy man of God". Praise be to the Lord.

At pushing two hours long, it very quickly ceases to be a leisure experience and becomes a chore spiced up by the odd, unintentional laugh.

Rather than raise Helen it would have been a blessing if they'd buried her.

Tim Evans