To the sort of girl who spent her time feverishly filling in the questionnaire at the back of Cosmopolitan instead of actually going out, The Rules were a godsend.

Instead of actually finding out if the object of desire had anything in common with you, girls spent large parts of the day glued to a stop-watch for the precise timings of phone calls.

The Rules, although sniggered about in wine bars up and down the country, were actually a courtship instruction manual of which Machiavelli would have been proud.

Now comes this utterly limp movie centring on the rather pathetic attempts of one woman to get her man back after he's (shock, horror!) been spotted with another woman.

No getting jiggy between the sheets mind, just having a drink and a shuffle on the dance floor with a work colleague.

The spurned lover in this case is Shante (Fox), whose predicament is made all the more embarrassing after she was the one handing out problem page advice to all her chums.

Anyway, loverboy Keith (Morris Chestnut) is caught redhanded stepping out with her arch-rival Conny (Gabrielle Union).

The biggest problem is that the lead characters are so unattractive, a state of affairs exacerbated by an utterly leaden script.

True, Fox could land a photoshoot for Vogue - but that doesn't make you wish that her smug asides to camera could be brought to halt by a couple of fingers caught in the doors of her Jag.

Another source of irritation is her posse of pals - the usual fare for chick-flicks but with all the appeal of a Liverpool hen party to the rest of us.

Shante launches on a a 'win him back' strategy of humiliation, punishment and jealousy - a ruse countered by Keith's relationship-wise buddy Tony (Anthony Anderson).

It all ends rather predictably - which is more than you would wish on a couple glorying in the names of Shante and Keith.

Tim Evans