ALL OF ME

The funniest part of this body share comedy is Steve Martin's somewhat improvised dancing with Lily Tomlin over the closing credits, which just emphasises that the film itself isn't anywhere near funny enough.

Sure there's no denying the skill with which Steve Martin portrays a man half of whose body is being controlled by Lily Tomlin, and this physical comedy does deliver some laughs, but this quickly palls.

Whilst the plot in a comedy is not super important it is a problem that the plotting here is so slack.

Steve Martin's character Roger starts the film engaged to a woman who clearly isn't right for him. This is a familiar staple of romcoms and although we know the couple will end up going their separate ways usually this parting occurs in an amusing or entertaining way.  Not so here, where the fiancée provides no comedic value and simply drops out of the film midway.

There is a subplot involving the divorce case of Roger's boss, but again this fizzles out.

We also get a blind musician friend of Roger who is caught up in the climactic scenes for no very good reason.

Lily Tomlin does her best with an unsympathetic character that I struggled to care about, and the director Carl Reiner does succeed in injecting some charm into proceedings but none of this can obscure the fundamental problem of the screenplay failing to do anything very inventive with the intriguing premise.

RATING: x Find Something Better To Do