Any group of shiny-teethed American suburbanites who knock back the latte at a coffee shop called Jitters really deserve everything they get.

And this lot pretty much get everything: infidelity, lesbian infidelity, heroin overdose, heart failure and the songs of Travis.

You gotta feel for 'em.

Well, actually, you don't. Which is a major failing in an ensemble drama where empathy with the lovelorn protagonists is the main driving force of the narrative.

Jitters is run by Bradley (Kinnear) a die-hard romantic you just know is going to get cuckolded by 1: Selma Blair's latent lesbian and 2: Radha Mitchell's nymphomaniac estate agent.

Indead, such are Radha's carnal cravings that much of the movie plays out like Little House on the Prairie with lashings of sex.

Joining them around the percolator are young lovers Chloe (Alexa Davelos) and Oscar (Toby Hemingway) whose fate is bizarrely foretold by an old crone with a set of dog-eared tarot cards.

Overseeing the whole glutinous, de-caffeinated mess is Morgan Freeman's Harry, a tweedy professor who keeps a weather eye on proceedings as the Oregon branch of Relate clock up the overtime.

The romantic musings sound like the script of Love Actually rewritten for a Californian self-help manual while the characters are so impossibly well-fed and well off they really have little grumble about.

(Especially, when there's always a chance of a tumble with Radha when she pops round to measure up.)

Robert Benton directed the seminal tearjerker Kramer vs Kramer but there's little of that movie's edge on display here.

You end up rather hoping that when this crew of Cupid's casualties ask for an Americano to go they mean just that.

Tim Evans