Newell paints a joyless picture

2:53pm Wednesday 10th March 2004

Mona Lisa Smile (12A)

Popcorn rating: 2/5

If Julia Roberts and Kirsten Dunst hadn't signed on to Mona Lisa Smile then it could have easily been the kind of soft-focused, sappy TV movie that you might find while channel surfing on cable. All the elements are in place: clichs, predictable script, cringeworthy lines and an overwhelming blandness about it all.

Director Mike Newell (Donnie Brasco and Four Weddings And A Funeral) seems to believe that by adding a message about feminism and a couple of big name stars he can disguise a story so tired that you can almost see the dribble pouring from the side of its mouth.

Roberts plays Katherine Watson, an art history teacher who moves from the liberal west coast to the stuffy east for a job at the prestigious women-only Wellesley College. By today's standards Miss Watson is a bit of a dull lecturer, but seeing as this is set in Fifties America she's positively radical. She tells her intelligent, free-thinking class of young women not to just get married and become housewives, and then shows them paintings by Jackson Pollock. She attends their parties and upsets the straight-laced college hierarchy.

The only remotely new thing about this tale that has been told a thousand times is that Miss Watson has a boyfriend who says he's Italian but is (gasp) lying, and talks in a rubbish 'Shaddapyaface'-style way (Hey-a Mon-a Lis-a! he trills whenever he sees Roberts). And how come such a talented group of people have made such an average movie?

Harmless but charmless, Mona Lisa Smile is a forgettable and mediocre chick-flick.