LAST HOLIDAY

Directed by Wayne Wang. Starring Queen Latifah, LL Cool J, Timothy Hutton, Giancarlo Esposito, Alicia Witt, Gérard Depardieu PG cert, gen release, 112 min

WHOSE is the last name you would expect to see on the credits of a Queen Latifah film about a shop assistant who discovers the true meaning of life (and so on) after being diagnosed with a fatal but symptom-free case of Bad Movie Disease?

If you said JB Priestley, then you are either very clever indeed or have recently spent an afternoon at home with the flu watching the 1950 version of Last Holiday on the telly. Henry Cass's film, which Priestley did indeed write, starred Alec Guinness, and if we ever encounter another example of the Queen inheriting a role from that actor then I promise to eat my own arm.

Anyway, this new version, directed by serial under-achiever Wayne Wang, is an altogether flashier, feistier business than the quaint British original. Following that grim visit to the doctor, Her Majesty, a keen amateur chef, liquidates all her assets and flies off to the Czech Republic for one last blow-out at a luxury hotel.

Upon arrival, she discovers that all kinds of influential figures from her life in Louisiana are also holidaying in the ski resort. Here, in the person of Timothy Hutton, is the owner of the department store in which she hitherto laboured. Over there we find a local senator. And a congressman.

You or I might imagine that those fatal brain lesions were generating hallucinations, but Latifah is made of sterner stuff. So, after making friends with Chef Gérard Depardieu, she sets out to persuade everybody else to do as she is doing and live life for the moment.

Last Holiday is, of course, manipulative rubbish of the dampest order. But Queen Latifah has such an irresistibly warm screen presence that she renders the film impossible to hate. On reflection, she is so aggressively charming that, though a tad weighty for the role, she might very well make sense replacing Alec Guinness in a remake of The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Sadly, nothing can lift the unintended atmosphere of poignancy that circumstances have imposed upon the film's ending. After life lessons have been learned, those characters who have not been taken away by Bad Movie Disease establish a restaurant serving food and joy to their local neighbourhood. That restaurant is in New Orleans. The film was shot a year ago. Oh dear. Donald Clarke