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Will Smith takes a break from saving the world to save desperate New York singletons in the lightweight romantic comedy Hitch, a movie based on the somewhat irksome premise that women will always fall for good looking, smooth operating bastards, leaving an army of short, fat, dawky nice guys with a plankton's chance in a shark pool of ever scoring a date. So step up 'consultant' Alex Hitchens (Smith), a professional 'Date Doctor' who helps these hopeless cases meet and capture the hearts of the loves of their lives. Using unheard of clever advice like 'listen to what she's saying'. You can almost hear the men in the audience slapping their foreheads in amazement, thinking 'Why did I never think of that?' No wonder Hitch gets to charge such high prices...

With his sharp suits, snappy chat up lines and unerring capacity for knowing what makes us silly ladies tick, Hitch himself is style and charm personified, and seems to have the (obvious) solution to every dating dilemma. Yet even he may have met his match (Not! This is a romantic comedy after all.) with clumsy no-hope accountant Albert Brennaman (Kevin James), a walking disaster area with a heart of gold, who hires the Date Doctor to help him win the affections of Cameron Diaz lookalike Allegra Cole (Amber Valletta), the world's most unconvincing heiress, who makes Paris Hilton look quite smart.

But engineering a romance between this most odd of odd couples becomes the least of Hitch's worries when he falls for feisty gossip columnist and confirmed bachelorette Sarah Melas (Eva Mendes) and suddenly loses all his legendary poise.

And, well, I don't think it's exactly spoiling things to tell you that, despite the obligatory trials and tribulations as the path of true love veers off course, the story has a happy ending, albeit courtesy of an unnecessarily and tiresomely drawn out final reconciliation scene.

Almost painfully predictable, it's blindingly obvious from the very beginning exactly how this film is going to unfold, and whilst there are a few genuinely funny moments, they don't quite make up for all the teethgrindingly bad bits (the schmaltzy 'sister who nearly died' scene is particularly crass).

Will Smith plays it relatively straight (thankfully - I don't think I could be doing with another OTT performance of Shark Tale dimensions), leaving most of the big laughs to hapless stooge Albert, who really rather steals the show. Eva Mendes looks fantastic and is likeable as the gutsy, career driven Sarah, but there doesn't seem to be much chemistry between her and Will Smith, which is a shame.

I suspect that scrape away the tired sexual stereotypes and cringesome self help clichés and you might find quite a sweet natured film underneath, but it takes a bit of finding. At first appearing to promote the polarised 'Mars and Venus' view of the sexes, in fact the film ends by suggesting that men and women are really pretty much the same deep down (a mass of tangled insecurities and deep seated hang ups) and it's just the way we package the raw materials that separates us out.

But perhaps that's reading a bit too much into such a harmless, superficial piece of light relief, the high point of which is some comedy crap dancing. Like Sex and the City without the sex or Bridget Jones without, well, Bridget, Hitch is good, clean, predictable romantic comedy fare. Okay, so as you may have guessed, I'm not a big fan of the romantic comedy genre. If it isn't Pretty Woman, My Best Friend's Wedding (now there's an unpredictable film!) or the Elvis-tastic Honeymoon in Vegas, I can pretty much take it or leave it - with the emphasis on the leave it. And, even with the funny dancing, Hitch, I'm afraid, can pretty much be ditched.