Jet Lag
There are those of us who would be willing to watch Juliette Binoche read the back of a cereal box for the duration of a feature film. We even put up with ''Chocolat.'' But there are limits to obsession, and they are reached, if not surpassed, by the papier-thin romantic comedy ''Jet Lag.'' Miramax is releasing the French film here on the strength of Binoche's name, but, believe me, you may safely send the movie back via airmail, unopened.
Unless you really like the idea of a Gallic ''Love American Style'' episode. ''Jet Lag'' is what in theater they call a ''two-hander'': For most of the running time the only people onscreen are Binoche as Rose, a big-hearted and not particularly bright Paris beautician, and Jean Reno (''The Professional'') as a celebrity chef so neurotically neat that he's actually named Felix.
The two keep crossing paths during a nightmarish 24 hours of air travel interrupted by transit strikes, flight cancellations, and missed connections. (This is apparently a French national pastime; as Felix says, ''Nothing works here except sleeping pills and vacations.'') Rose is a flibbertigibbet who's on the run from an abusive boyfriend and who accidentally flushes her cell phone down the airport loo -- the movie's funniest gag, which should tell you something. Felix is a hypoallergenic wreck with a hostile ex-wife and an unhappy new job as CEO of a frozen food company.
These opposites don't attract until they're forced to share a hotel room, and even then Rose somehow ends up with a tureen of vinaigrette dumped on her head. Waste of a good vinaigrette, I say.
The leads, in other words, are playing against type, Binoche slathering her beauty with tarty makeup and macho Reno quivering like a schoolgirl. Binoche appears to be having fun (Reno doesn't), and I'm all for stars breaking out of the boxes their hits place them in, but couldn't someone have come up with a better script?
Director Daniele Thompson (''La Buche'') wrote the screenplay with her son Christopher, and there isn't a moment you won't see coming a kilometer away. That includes the scene in the hotel kitchen where the two finally drop their guard and start to fall in love. The problem is that this contradicts everything we've been told about these people up to then. (At least the filmmakers are kind enough to include the scene's recipe for veal mignonettes in the end credits.)
Perhaps I'm being harsh. ''Jet Lag'' scores some droll points about cellphone culture, and it has a nice feel for the neither-here-nor-there rootlessness of modern travel. The movie also gets a lift when Rose's dastardly boyfriend briefly shows up, played by Sergi Lopez, the title psychopath from ''With a Friend Like Harry.'' Now there's an actor who knows the virtues of playing to type.
As a credible love story, though, the film never leaves the runway. If you're a fan of these actors, you may want to look up ''Jet Lag'' when it comes out on video, or catch it on an Air France flight while flirting with the passenger in the next seat. But you don't have to be a xenophobe to wonder why this film is being released in the States when we have plenty of stale romantic comedies of our own.
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