Martha - Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence 15 Director Nick Hamm 90mins

THE quirky title makes Martha - Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence sound like one of those Barclays ads that comes up before the main feature at the cinema.

And Nick Hamm's uninspired direction makes it look like one as well, ah well. Still, it's not all bad. Martha etc (as I shall now refer to it) has a light and engaging plot, some light and engaging characters and leaves you feeling, well, lightly entertained at the end.

It could have been called Three English fops and an American. There are more than a few similarities between this and another successful British movie - no not the one with the stripping steelworkers, the one where a broken-hearted American woman comes over to this country and proves to a shy, English bloke that the course of true love never runs smoothly. Except here there are three English blokes.

The plot is brilliantly simple in its complexity. Martha meets flash record executive Daniel on an aeroplane from Minneapolis as she embarks on a new life in Blighty. He fancies her and suggests she stays the night in a flash London hotel at his company's expense. In 24 hours she has met and won the hearts of Frank and Laurence too - all three are best friends. Without giving too much away, she loses her heart to one of them and he must decide between the woman and his friends.

It sounds a preposterous coincidence in a city of ten million people, something that the characters acknowledge, but it is explained well enough - belief does not have to be suspended too much to appreciate that it could happen.

The device for telling the story is wonderful. Laurence, disturbed at the way this woman is threatening the life-long friendship of his group of mates, visits a psychiatrist who lives downstairs from him. As he opens his heart, we watch the story unfold in flashbacks.

Joseph Fiennes (Ralph's baby brother) brings a truckload of sensitivity to the role of Laurence. This is quite a feat. Although it is he that visits the psychiatrist (with a twist), there seems to be little in the dialogue to flesh out his character - it is never explained why his room is full of drawings, for instance.

Frank and Daniel, too, are types - Daniel (Tom Hollander), particularly, plays a text-book flash bloke - nasty, trendy suits and a persona as shallow as it reads. Frank, a failed child star, is probably the most developed and original of the lot. In him, Rufus Sewell has by far the most interesting role to explore and there is the feeling at the end of the movie that perhaps he should have been the focal point, developed more and given more screen time, than Laurence. As it is, he is grossly underused.

Martha (Monica Potter) wrinkles her nose a lot as she plays the lovestruck and heartbroken American girl. Maybe it is because the movie is short, but by the end she too seems little more than somebody just met. As the lads all fell for her superficial charm, there was always the question of what lay under the surface - for them and for the audience. Perhaps this was the idea.

There are laughs. There is empathy for the characters. It is British. But Martha etc. lacks that extra something that made Four Weddings, Full Monty and even Shooting Fish the enjoyable romantic comedies that they were. Close but no BAFTA. Jeremy Austin

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.