LESBIAN VAMPIRE KILLERS * *
Cert 15, 86 mins
Mathew Horne and James Corden had great success with the BBC sitcom Gavin & Stacey and now have their own sketch show.

But they didn’t write this comedy horror and struggle with a puerile script.

They play friends on a hiking holiday in Norfolk, ending up in a cottage with nubile girls until the partying is rudely interrupted by an attack from lesbian vampires.

I admit to chuckling a couple of times, but it’s not funny enough or remotely scary. Even the 15-year-old boys who will be drawn by the film’s title may be disappointed at the limited lesbian action.

Flashy camera tricks and graphics can’t save it, nor can Paul McGann hamming it up as a vicar who mysteriously disappears from the action, perhaps in shame.  RL

DUPLICITY * * *
Cert 12A, 125 mins
He wrote the entire Bourne trilogy and then earned seven Oscar nominations as the writer and director of the George Clooney film, Michael Clayton.

So no one could blame Tony Gilroy from trying his luck again at both disciplines with this thriller.

A combination of screwball romantic comedy, spy thriller and timely essay about 21st century industrial espionage, Duplicity is nothing if not ambitious.

Former CIA officer Claire Stenwich (Julia Roberts) and ex-MI5 agent Ray Koval (Clive Owen) are now working in the murky world of protecting multinational secrets.

There’s a fortune to be made if a patent can be secured for the latest hot product.

Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson) and Dick Garsik (Paul Giamatti) are deadly corporate rivals, but the boundaries between Stenwich and Koval are not quite so clear.

That they may – or may not – be on their way to becoming an item is where Duplicity is at its most fun.

Except for whenever the brilliant Giamatti is all-too-briefly on screen, that is, and then you’re left firmly wondering why he isn’t a central character capable of moving this out of the Mr & Mrs Smith territory previously occupied by Pitt and Jolie.

Duplicity opens with an extraordinary slow-motion scrap between Wilkinson and Giamatti which could have been worth a short film in its own right. Sadly, given the fact there are still two hours to go, nothing in the rest of the film ever quite matches up.

Roberts and Owen make the most of a friendship forged on the set of Roger Michel’s Closer to indulge us with their big love scene.

And Gilroy gently hops around the globe like Ocean’s 12 on beta blockers.

But the film is so complex and off-centre, and the repetitive use of the its best lines of dialogue so irritating, that neither Owen nor Roberts look likely to carry Duplicity up to must-see status.

After a big build up, the denouement is predictable.

And the final camera shot is already too formulaic after Michael Clayton.

Back to the drawing board, Tone.    GY

FLASH OF GENIUS * * *
Cert 12A, 119 mins
A two-hour film about the man who invented intermittent windscreen wipers doesn’t sound like a great night out at the cinema.

Thanks to Greg Kinnear in the leading role, it’s more compelling than you’d expect. But only just.

He plays Dr Bob Kearns, a lecturer in electrical engineering in Detroit in the 1960s who likes tinkering in his basement.

Fed up with windscreen wipers which squeak when operating in drizzle, he sets about inventing a version which replicates a blinking eye.

It’s not explained how he manages to do this remarkably quickly, beating all the auto engineers working full-time, but the top men at Ford are excited by his invention.

Kearns is bemused when they suddenly pull out of the deal – until, months later, Ford launches a new Mustang model featuring intermittent wipers.

When Ford refuses to admit they stole his idea, he sues. Even when they offer him money to go away, he continues his decades-long fight for recognition.

When he falls out with lawyer Alan Alda, he represents himself in court. He is so consumed by the David v Goliath fight that his wife (Lauren Graham) leaves with their six children.

Flash Of Genius is too long and repetitive, and in the final courtroom scenes – in which much dramatic licence has been taken with real events – it becomes too schmaltzy and clichéd.   RL

PAUL BLART: MALL COP * * *
Cert PG, 91 mins
Just as long as you really, really fancy going to a shopping centre mulitplex to watch a film about the sort of shopping centre security guard you might pass on the way in, then Paul Blart is going to be a hoot.

Already a massive $130 million hit in the US, Mall Cop is full of silly stunts involving a character whose white shirt looks like it’s been shrink-wrapped onto the rotund body of Kevin James (Hitch).

Lines like ‘The next time I see you, I’m gonna put a bullet in your head’ should have taken this out of the way of under 12s, but teen viewers will not only enjoy the dumbness on view but will leave the cinema desperate to have a ride on Blart’s Segway electric scooter.   GY

IL DIVO * * *
Cert 15, 118 mins
Well-acted and stylishly shot, but ridiculously complex, this Italian film won the Jury Prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.

It stars Tonio Servillo as Giulio Andreotti, the ‘Teflon’ Italian politician who has been in power for over four decades and has been prime minister seven times despite being at the centre of a corruption scandal.

This film follows him in the early 1990s as he faces charges of conspiracy, collusion with the Mafia and murder.

It’s very hard to keep up with who’s who, especially when everyone has nicknames like The Lemon and The Shark.

You’ll enjoy this if you have a good knowledge of Italian politics, but others may well be baffled.   RL