Fred (Christopher Plummer) recently lost his wife in New Orleans. He's a bitter old man alone after a life of being unhappily married. His intrusive daughter Lydia (Marcia Gay Harden) moves him into a small apartment. She has a money grubbing creep for a husband, Jack (Chris Noth) and a downtrodden teenage son. Fred's new neighbor is the irreverent liar Elsa (Shirley MacLaine). She dreams of being Anita Ekberg in Marcello Mastroianni's La Dolce Vita.

This movie puts me off almost immediately with Jack taking the cabbie's change. He's an annoying jerk and not in a fun way. It would work if I like Elsa but I find her just as annoying. It's trying to make her irreverence as fun but it's all so self-serving. I do like Fred. As for the coupling, I'm willing to root for them if only to improve Elsa. At last, I don't think his effect on her is quite as powerful. That perfectly nice waiter will have to pay for their dine and dash.

US remake of the 2005 Spanish-Argentine co-production "Elsa y Fred" casts Shirley MacLaine and Christopher Plummer as single oldsters living next door to each other in the same New Orleans townhouse, each saddled with over-protective grown children. They share money and health concerns--as well as the proverbial cranky-cute idiosyncrasies found in most feature-length sitcoms. Director Michael Radford, who also reportedly worked on the script without credit, is a filmmaker raised on reruns: there isn't an honest situation or reaction in the entire movie. While it is wonderful to see MacLaine and Plummer together, their characters are just 'colorful' sketches (and the sentiment we're supposed to automatically feel towards them is offensive). MacLaine tries creating a goosey, unflappable woman prone to giggling and full of neighborly good cheer, but she's covered much of this territory before (such as in "Used People"). After a self-defeating first reel--utilizing shots of Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" to set the mood, followed by an unfunny fender-bender--Radford settles into mildewy romantic comedy territory, with jokes that fall like wet sponges around the actors. This movie could use a Fellini. *1/2 from ****

Maybe parts for older actors are a bit more difficult to come by, but why two great performers like Shirley MacLaine and Christopher Plummer agreed to appear in such dross is beyond me. Clearly, given this currently has a rating of 6.5 on IMDb, not everyone agrees with me, now I am not the biggest rom-com fan around, so this starts at a bit of a disadvantage, but give me a descent one and I am more than happy to watch it and give a higher rating if merited.

For a start it's listed as a comedy, one little snigger is all I found throughout. The music is just awful, the story is very predictable, it's pretty bad all round.

The stars do, at least, try to give it a go but even the true romantics out there may find it hard to find anything to shout about here.