Britney Spears must be the most celebrated professional virgin since Doris Day was in her prime.

More provocative, of course, her sexy dress and body language rather contradicting her protestations of being virgo intacta.

Of the sexy dress there is little evidence in this, her movie debut, except an early knickers and bra scene, but against that there is much talk of how, or whether, the virgo will end up tacta.

Will she, the squeaky-clean highschool girl, succumb to the sweaty advances of the classroom nerd or will she fall for moody musician Anson Mount? (Good surname that for a prospective seducer.)

Spears' youthful fans will surely be eager to find out, though I doubt whether anyone past puberty will care much.

Essentially, this is a road movie in which Spears and two school friends, Zoe Saldana and Taryn Manning, head for Arizona and Los Angeles in a car driven by Mount.

Saldana is looking for her boyfriend, Manning wants to be a singer, Mount is joining a band and Spears is seeking her long lost bolter of a mother.

In a plot stretched thinner than Spears' knicker elastic hardly anything really happens.

Even the revelation of which of the girls finally lands the singing contract hardly comes as a surprise.

Altogether this is an odd and naïve vehicle in which to launch a pop star's film career.

With the kind of well-scrubbed shopgirl prettiness that she shares with Victoria Beckham, Spears is likeable enough but on the question of whether she can act the jury is still out.

Or maybe it's just gone home, waiting for more evidence to be provided.

Barry Norman