Ordinary people

"A Life Less Ordinary" (15) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin

Great indeed were the expectations set up by the team of writer John Hodge, director Danny Boyle and producer Andrew Macdonald after the achievements of Shallow Grave and, especially, Trainspotting. And great indeed is the disappointment of their third movie, A Life Less Ordinary, a miscalculated romantic fantasy.

The movie opens in Heaven, where the angel Gabriel (played by Dan Hedaya) bemoans the rising divorce figures on our planet and the decreasing number of earthlings falling in love, and despatches two angelic operatives (Holly Hunter and Delroy Lindo) on a mission to bring an unlikely couple together.

One is Celine (Cameron Diaz), a spoiled, wealthy young American woman who has never worked a day in her life and amuses herself by shooting apples off the head of her butler. The other is Robert (Ewan McGregor), a naive young Scot who works as a cleaner in the corporation run by her father (Ian Holm) and dreams of writing the great trash novel.

When Robert is replaced by a robot, he takes Celine hostage and they go on the road. The twist is that Robert is too good-natured to play kidnapper and it's Celine who's in control. And as ever, it's dislike at first sight and only a matter of time before they fall in love.

Parts of A Life Less Ordinary - set-pieces such as an out-of-place all-out, all-singing, all-dancing duet by Diaz and McGregor of Beyond The Sea - are more satisfying than its whole. The movie looks gorgeous and makes bountiful use of its Utah locations. And the two leads give it their all. McGregor is perfectly cast as the hapless Robert, and he milks scenes such as one in which he cries his eyes out as he's forced to dig his own grave. However, it is Cameron Diaz who lights up the screen in A Life Less Ordinary, and her brash, extroverted Celine is the flipside of the sweetly innocent Kimmy she plays in the current release, My Best Friend's Wedding.

At the heart of this seriously uneven entertainment is the unpredictable and often inexplicable role played by fate in our lives, but in attempting to deal with that theme the film-makers follow that unpredictability to quite irrational extremes. Some of the dialogue is simply daft or glib, as when Diaz comments: "You have the demeanour of someone who's been left by his partner for an aerobics instructor". And the device of having the lovers-to-be pursued by angels registers as intrusive and irritating, with Holly Hunter's unrestrained overacting threatening to capsize every scene she's in.

"Ma Vie En Rose" (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin

As Ma Vie En Rose begins, a child's face is partially revealed in tight close-ups, first applying lipstick, then putting on earrings - until the child is finally revealed as a boy in full drag. He is the seven-year-old Ludo, who startles his parents and their guests by dressing as a fairy princess for their housewarming party. The cosy atmosphere is unsettled by Ludo's appearance, but his father passes it all off as a joke and the incident is forgotten. For a while.

When Ludo's teacher asks his class to bring their toys to school, the other boys bring trucks and gameboys, while Ludo brings a doll. When Ludo is befriended by Jerome, the son of his father's boss, they act out a wedding ceremony in which Ludo marries Jerome with a teddy bear officiating. Jerome's mother faints at the sight.

The youngest of four children, Ludo has two brothers and a sister - and he's convinced he should be a girl. Ludo dreams of himself and Jerome flying away to the fantasy land of the television character, Pam, whom he adores - a brightly coloured neverland that's predominantly pink, and hence the movie's punning title.

Ma Vie En Rose charts the consequences when Ludo persists with his ambition to be a girl, and he and his family are shunned by neighbours whose earlier sunny behaviour peels away to reveal bigotry, prejudice and fear of people and things different. Simultaneously, the movie's initially warm and gleaming colour scheme gradually gives way to darker tones.

This tender, cherishable and enchanting comedy-drama is sensitively and imaginatively directed by the young Belgian film-maker, Alain Berliner, in an auspicious feature debut. Sparkling with good humour before it shifts into pathos, the film registers as an articulate plea for tolerance while its innocent young protagonist remains blithely baffled by all the fuss he's causing.

Berliner's casting is inspired and he elicits a marvellous performance from the gifted young Georges Du Fresne as Ludo. His parents, who surprise themselves with their individual responses to Ludo's rejection, are skilfully played by Jean-Philippe Ecoffey, and the prolific and versatile comedienne Michele Laroque.

Hugh Linehan adds:

"The Peacemaker" (15s) Nationwide

The Peacemaker is exactly the type of first movie you'd expect from Dreamworks Pictures, whose co-founders, Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, are known for their commitment to mainstream entertainment values and their well-tuned understanding of what the audience wants.

The story opens with an impressively-staged heist in the heart of Russia, when corrupt Red Army officers seize a train carrying nuclear warheads. When one of the warheads explodes, the White House Nuclear Smuggling Group, headed by Nicole Kidman, is activated. With the assistance of Special Forces officer George Clooney, Kidman sets out to find what has happened to the remaining warheads. enouement in the middle of Manhattan.

This is all executed with considerable style by director Mimi Leder, making her feature film debut after directing and producing several award-winning episodes of ER. In fact, Leder's handsome images are a great help in overcoming some of the more obvious absurdities in Michael Schiffer's screenplay; in particular, she succeeds against the odds in integrating the romantic subtext between Kidman and Clooney into the 10-minutes-to-save-the-world plot dynamics.

Of course, The Peacemaker's portrait of modern geopolitics is ridiculous, and its measurement of the relative value of American and non-American lives deeply objectionable (one might think that with an increasing percentage of Hollywood's profits coming from outside North America, there might be a little more sensitivity to international sensibilities). But there's a level of competence to its execution, and of likeability to its stars, which puts it at least in the upper half of this year's action blockbusters.