ANDREW CLARKE You can hear the pitch to the studio head and you can see why they green-lighted the film: "It's a revenge comedy - but with a difference.

ANDREW CLARKE

Great idea - disappointing film.

You can hear the pitch to the studio head and you can see why they green-lighted the film: "It's a revenge comedy - but with a difference.

What would happen if you dumped your girlfriend, but she was really a superhero and used her super powers to get her own back on you." You can see the studio executives' eyes light up.

It ticks all the boxes: date movie potential, comedy, good looking actress and special effects for the boys and women's perspective for the girls.

So the producer turns round writes a cheque for several million dollars, they go away hire Uma Thurman and Luke Wilson, but forget to engage a scriptwriter.

The plot is as detailed above, but the problem is that they have failed to write any funny dialogue. Eddie Izzard, probably one of the funniest men on the planet, is cast as the super-villain Professor Bedlam, but he is given virtually nothing to do.

He's not even as entertaining as Syndrome - the wannabe sidekick/villain from The Incredibles. To be fair, all three of the leads - Thurman, Wilson and Izzard - do their best, but the material is just not up to the task.

If I were Reitman [director] I would have taken one look at the script and bounced it straight back at the writer with a note that said: "Where are the laughs?"

In the whole film there is only one laugh-out-loud moment when Thurman lets fly an outsized shark at Wilson when he wakes up in the arms of his beautiful colleague Anna Faris (Hannah Lewis).

It's difficult to believe that the director who gave the world such a beautiful comic confection like Ghostbusters can come up with something as clunky and leaden as My Super Ex-Girlfriend.

Thurman gives a heroic performance trying to enliven proceedings and does well as the feisty G-Girl and her nerdy art gallery alter-ego Jenny. Given that she is given such thin material to work with it is little short of amazing that she can conjure up a character that we can relate to.

Wilson trots out his amiable good-old Southern boy routine as a mid-level architect who seems prone to landing himself in trouble with the HR department of his firm through what they perceive as inappropriate behaviour.

Sadly, their best friends who offer emotional support throughout are little more than cardboard cut-outs - Faris and Rainn Wilson do their best, but there is precious little they can do with parts that only exist to move the plot along.

The special effects are not that special and work only because they are in a comedy - there is not a lot of thought given to make them look believable or realistic.

There is still a good comedy to be made about this idea - sadly My Super Ex-Girlfriend is not it.