Superlative people make mistakes, just like the rest of us.??Richard Pryor??told plenty of jokes that fell flat, Jack Niklaus hit plenty of balls into the rough and Julia Child??cooked plenty of unpalatable meals. And now, with the release of \The Laws of Attraction,"" starring Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore, audiences are greeted with one of the most inelegant movies ever to be made by two such superlatively elegant people.
The movie centers around Audrey Miller (Moore), a successful and stubbornly single divorce attorney in New York. As Miller fends off her intrusive mother (Nora Dunn), she finds herself litigating against Daniel Rafferty (Brosnan), a handsome and infuriatingly strident legal ace. The story follows them as alcohol leads to unintended??intimacy between them and they argue both in and out of the courtroom.
The movie starts out innocently enough. While it immediately announces itself as silly and fluffy, the first third of the movie feels like ""How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,"" where the charismatic stars overcame the inanity of the movie.
But ""Laws of Attraction"" quickly devolves into a meandering, nonsensical and stupid mess of a movie. The running gags, like Miller's infatuation with the Weather Channel, are unfunny. And most of the plot twists, like the couple's volatile dealings with a quarreling rock star marriage, are forced and campy.
What especially kills the movie is its total and utter lack of romance. Every time the two leads merely don't hate each other, the romantic music starts playing to emphasize their non-existent romance. The audience is supposed to believe they fall for each other, but there is never anything resembling courtship or seduction. Instead, there is only alcohol and nice clothing-enough to spark a Friday night hookup, but certainly not enough to sustain a central romance.
The one redeeming factor in the movie is Brosnan. Watching him work his charisma as a caddish and eccentric unorthodox lawyer is a pleasure. His performance is smooth, without the inherent sterility of his standard James Bond gig. The weak moments in his performance only come from being forced to spit out hideous one-liners or ridiculous emotional expositions.
What's most tragic about ""Laws of Attraction"" is Moore's presence. It's dumbfounding to see her appear in such unmitigated dreck. After dual Oscar nominations in 2003 for ""The Hours"" and ""Far from Heaven,"" did she really long for the days of ""Nine Months?"" Roles like this should be left to non-talents like Sandra Bullock, not to a serious and gifted actress like Moore.
""Laws of Attraction"" is bad enough to make audiences angry, but forgettable enough that few will bother. A fatally skin-deep movie, it is only remotely passable because with Brosnan and Moore, it's very nice skin. It's disheartening to see two such elegant actors join together, only to be saddled with such a stunningly bad script. Brosnan and Moore are stuck with their bad choice. Moviegoers don't have to be.
