Main cast: Josh Hartnett (Matthew), Rose Byrne (Alex), Matthew Lillard (Luke), Diane Kruger (Lisa), Christopher Cousins (Daniel), and Jessica Paré (Rebecca)
Director: Paul McGuigan

This version of Wicker Park is adapted from the 1996 French movie L’Appartement. It is about this fellow, Matthew, who falls in love with Lisa until she vanishes one day on him. Matthew moves on but just as he is about to marry another woman, he encounters someone who looks like Lisa. This leads him on a frantic search, along the way getting involved with another woman Alex. I suppose I am supposed to care about such pointless shenanigans. Meanwhile, Matthew Lillard chews scenery as Luke, Matthew’s buddy.

The problem with this movie is that it requires a huge suspension of disbelief on my part. This plot relies on Matthew constantly missing important calls or messages because the phone rings at the wrong time or someone forgets to pass a message to him or, I don’t know, all the cell phones in the world just happen to break down and everything is an The X-Files-type alien conspiracy to prolong the lack of communication.

The pacing is slow and sluggish with all those flashbacks thrown my way that comprise the young cast trying very hard to mope or scowl at the camera. Josh Hartnett has only one facial expression in this movie, okay, two if I count the furrowed brow thing that he does when his character is supposed to be worried. The two women are wasted in roles that pretty much require them to stand there, look pretty, and show some skin in case the men in the audience have fallen into a coma. Mr Hartnett doesn’t show much skin, of course, because we all know straight women and gay men don’t watch movies.

Wicker Park is such a boring movie, which seems like a contradiction of sorts given how amusingly implausible the twists that keep coming become as the movie drags on interminably. But it is. This movie manages to be both ridiculous and deadly dull, impossible as it may seem.