The Mirror Has Two Faces review

You might as well know now. You're not going to like The Mirror Has Two Faces. Not that it's irredeemable. The problem is just that this two-hour romantic comedy (girl film) is so sedate you'd have to strap it to a rocket to make it to go anywhere in a hurry. In fact, The Mirror has the ambling, poke-free feel of an old Doris Day-Rock Hudson movie - the kind of thing you'd watch because there's nothing else on telly except Songs Of Praise.

Directed by Barbra Streisand [insert big-nose gag here], it establishes and then demolishes the theory that a marriage can survive without sex. Gregory Larkin (Jeff Bridges) is a maths professor who, after a string of dismal flings, sets out to find an unattractive woman with whom to be "best friends". He decides it's sex that ruins relationships, and so chooses fellow Prof, Rose Morgan (Ms Streisand), to be his soulmate in celibacy. For a while, their relationship (based on intellectual, not genital, stimulation) seems to work. But Rose is a true romantic, and, despite the fact that Gregory remains icy, she longs for love and a night of non-stop sweaty pumpage.

Ably supported by Pierce Brosnan, Mimi Rogers and Lauren Bacall, Streisand directs with a steady hand and a large nose. She gets all the best lines too, rattling off satirical quips like an equine Woody Allen with breasts. Her character is the most sympathetic, too - full of life, and, it seems, far too much fun for Bridges' dull calculus professor.

The Mirror is an ugly duckling tale, an hour of whingeing followed by a life-changing make-over (eye-shadow and a Wonderbra) that transforms Rose's turgid sex life. As a movie, it`s old-fashioned - comfortably chucklesome, but so predictable you can see the plot being hand-twisted. Still, unless you find the "Why do women have small feet?" joke* hilarious, you'll find at least some of it entertaining.

*So they can get closer to the cooker