Smug Shot

Reviewed - Trust the Man: IF you want to learn why so many inhabitants of the US's less fashionable locales loathe New Yorkers, then take a glance at this unspeakably smug, head-spinningly dire relationship comedy from The Husband of Julianne Moore.

Featuring endless jokes about parking dilemmas, innumerable references to the city's trendier cafes and fruitless attempts to derive humour from the infrequency of a couple's attendance at therapy, Trust the Man plays like the work of a gang of self-satisfied downtown bores eager to inform the (uncaring) world how chic their neighbourhood is.

You might very well argue that Woody Allen's finest films move in similar territory. But The Husband of Julianne Moore has such a tin ear for dialogue and is so lazy in his comic plotting that the comparison rapidly loses any currency. "I don't even know you any more," one of the twits, a friend to cliche, says to her partner at some point. Other, more obvious clunkers litter the script.

Were we in any doubt that we were dealing with an orgy of self-regard, such uncertainties would be dispelled by a consideration of the parallels between the lives of the main warring couple and the film's star and director. Moore plays a successful Hollywood actress whose husband (David Duchovny), once an advertising executive, is now feeling slightly emasculated by his role as an under-achieving house-husband. The pair are friendly with another brace of annoying bohemians (Maggie Gyllenhaal and Billy Crudup) currently undergoing problems of their own.

One is tempted to suggest that The Husband of Julianne Moore has, unconsciously or not, used his emotional bond with that actress to lure her into a fearfully unworthy project. But, truth be told, Moore is to comedy what locusts are to corn fields and, though her presence must certainly have helped the film gain finance, she must hold a degree of responsibility for the atrocity ending up as one of the worst films of the year.

The good people of Omaha and Des Moines would be within their rights to throw turnips at it.