大象传媒

A romance so old-fashioned that audiences will be checking not just their watches but their calendars, These Foolish Things is a well made but achingly square drama. Zoe Tapper stars as Diana Shaw, an acting wannabe in 30s London whose attempts to tread the boards without falling flat on her face are interspersed with interludes ripped straight from the pages of Mills and Boon. Terence Stamp and Angelica Huston breathe some much-needed life into proceedings, but otherwise this is for incurable romantics only.

Based on the novel There's A Porpoise Close Behind Us by Noel Langley (no, us neither), director Julia Taylor-Stanley successfully captures the look of late 30s Britain - the film was shot on location in Cheltenham - but presents a series of characters who could have ambled in off the set of Brief Encounter. These Foolish Things is full of cads, bounders, penniless artistes and fluttering hearts, but it's lacking three-dimensional characters at its heart. Tapper's young ing茅nue never engages, while the two men in pursuit of her - David Leon's struggling playwright and Andrew Lincoln's oh-so-earnest director - are painfully dull.

"MIDDLE-OF-THE-ROAD"

This theatrical tale really could do with more theatrics, and thankfully Terence Stamp provides them whenever he's onscreen. His bitter butler spews out one-liners and put downs ("Feel like a prawn?") which briefly illuminate proceedings, as do his scenes with Angelica Huston, clearly having fun as an American aristo. There's definitely a place for films as slickly produced and middle-of-the-road as These Foolish Things; it's called afternoon television.