This is the kind of film the French used to be so good at making.

Two characters, strangers at the start of the story, are obviously destined to end up with each other from the first reel.

The trick is to keep us watching through the fights and misadventures until they do it.

Director Michael Hoffman pretty much pulls it off here, throwing single mum Michelle Pfeiffer, an architect, and single dad-for-the-weekend George Clooney, a reporter, together when they literally miss the boat or their respective offspring's 'field trip'.

There's lots of pace, plenty of good humour and even a little genuine wit, amidst a welter of missed appointments, lost kids, near disasters and stand-up fights, before our protagonists fall exhausted into each other's arms in a neatly worked ending.

Very lightweight fare, this, but nicely topped and tailed as all the apartment windows into which we've spied at the beginning of the film find their own happy endings.