Stepmom

We are coddled with bittersweet cocoa, dazzled with movie-star melodramatics and then trotted off to warm beds with assurance that as hard as life may get, there will always be a movie to trivialize our pain.

It's a lovely daydream, made lovelier by the fiercely maternal performance of Sarandon as a lioness protecting her cubs, and Julia Roberts as a mass of insecurity trying to measure up to impossible standards.

Well, if unearned pathos is your cup of tea, drink up.

Under Chris Columbus' direction, they make a pretty but utterly misleading picture in which cheap sentiment is used to supply easy, false resolutions to agonizing issues.

Roberts holds her own with a very attractive performance, admittedly given that hers is the character who is likeable, good-humoured and too good to be true.

The result is a cartoonish two-hour-plus soap opera of little distinction, played by actors who deserve better and should have known better.

Premature death has long been a screenwriter's crutch, but it's rarely felt as annoying as it does here.

The saddest thing about Stepmom is that so many good actors are laid waste to this sappy and unrelenting melodrama. A waste of talent of this magnitude is really something to cry about.

It earns its tears with great performances and good writing

If you're going to make children say such terrible things, you should at least back it up with a movie about divorce and death that is sincere and penetrating. In other words, the type of film that Chris Columbus wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.