As the story opens, Isabel has arrived in Paris to visit her pregnant sister, who is married to a Frenchman. Roxy's husband is leaving her, since he is having an affair and wants a divorce. Their divorce is a slow-motion train wreck that is one of the movie's many subthemes. Before you can blink an eye, Isabel, without a hint of jetlag, has gone to bed with a Frenchman her age and then started an affair with a married Frenchman twice her age. The movie's on-going joke is that the French don't care about marital infidelity and that their response is always, "of course."

Hudson, who has shined in so many films recently, is almost as awful this time as she was in THE FOUR FEATHERS. Neither she, Watts nor any of the leads are able to make their characters convincing or genuine. It falls to a few of the supporting cast to breathe a little life into the story. Especially good are Sam Waterston and Stockard Channing, as Isabel and Roxy's parents, and Bebe Neuwirth (TADPOLE), who plays an art curator.

The movie switches awkwardly at times between English and French as if there were some contractual obligation about the relative amount of each language to be spoken.

Although there is a tiny surprise or two thrown in at the conclusion, the movie basically ends as it began, which is just to continue lumbering along.

LE DIVORCE runs 1:57. The film is in English and in French with English subtitles. It is rated PG-13 for "mature thematic elements and sexual content" and would be acceptable for any kid old enough to be able to read the subtitles.

My son Jeffrey, age 14, gave it **, saying that it went on too long and had too many needless subplots. About the only thing positive he had to say about the movie was that he always enjoys Kate Hudson.