pity about the story

was a week for movie watching -- saw Le Divorce and Secondhand Lions

Le Divorce is based on a best-selling book by Diane Johnson, which i;ve heard isn't too good -- neither is the movie.

It's like when youré putting together a jigsaw puzzle and there are some pieces that look like they fit but they actually don't.

I left the theatre thinking that the show on the whole was alright, watchable but it had so many pieces that didn't fit right. It was very disjointed, and while watching it, I would feel like something's missing.

Generally the film opens with Isabel who's visiting her sister in Paris. The sister's French hubby has just left her for another woman -- so that's where the divorce part comes in.

Then there are the subplots== a tussle about the ownership of a painting that might be by Georges de la Tour; Isabel's affair with an older married Frenchman who once had a relationship with her boss, an American writer; a crazed, jealous husband whosé wife is the one the French hubby's seeing (there's a real hilarious scene at the top of the Eiffel Tower, altho the director probably didn't mean it to be funny)

So the potentially great ensemble cast was let down by a crappy script. Kate Hudson (who gets to wear the best clothes!), Australiá's runner-up darling Naomi Watts (as a very dowdy sister), Matthew Modine, Glenn Close, Stockard Channing, and an assortment of French people (including a v cute Jean-Marc Barr)

Secondhand Lions was a whole lot better. Thanks to Michael Caine, Robert Duvall and Haley Joel Osment.

The film is written and directed by Tim McClanies. Having previously written the screenplay for The Iron Giant and directed one obscure film, you are forgiven for asking Tim who?

But he does a pretty darn decent job with a well-used storyline.

Can't say the same for James Ivory, who directed Le Divorce. Ivory, who also directed 'the beautiful A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, has a thing or two to learn from McCanlies.