Actress Rebecca and her stay at home hubby are having problems; he wants sex all the time and she doesn't. Her brother Tobey refuses to commit to his girlfriend Elaine and then an old flame appears. Love is never as simple as it first seems and everyone is challenged by keeping it together when sex, marriage and jealousy enter the equation.

A huge stumbling block in the screenplay is that lack of sympathetic characters. All the main players are so self-absorbed it's virtually impossible to empathise with them. Rebecca is a cold, demanding actress, her house-husband partner defined solely buy his sexual obsessions, her brother by his inability to commit to his girlfriend and she by her desire for an old-fashioned lifestyle and babies. They all lack depth and come across as a bunch of over-privileged thirty-somethings with a very narrow focus and too much time on their hands. Their conversations revolve entirely around sex and how their relationships are disintegrating, so once you've heard one, you've heard them all. Attempts at comedy are limited to excessive use of sarcasm that would be the lowest form of wit here, were it not for the use of slapstick that seems like a last desperate try at injecting some humour. There are a few mildly amusing moments (like Rebecca's technical description of a porn movie that focuses more on the production values than the action). So-called "comic" supporting characters feel totally out of place in the highly strung world the main protagonists inhabit. These include the outlandish theatre folk that are nothing more than irritating stereotypes. The assertion that men and women talk different languages is borne out in predictable fashion as both sexes talk about each other in emotional or physical terms respectively. Mainly it's an excuse for pointless psychobabble.

As Rebecca, Julianne Moore proves that "Freedomland" wasn't an aberration and that she is very good at making very bad career choices. It also proves that though she may be a good dramatic actress, she has no comic timing and this leads to a series of deeply unfunny situations where she can't pull the joke out of the bag when she needs to. And despite this being her second film with David Duchovny, they have zero chemistry so you don't care what happens to them as a couple. She comes across as cold and high maintenance, with no redeeming features.

At first you think Maggie Gyllenhaal's going to pull out another of her cutesy performances as Elaine, but that's before she becomes petulant and demanding. The two main aspects of her personality sit ill at ease with each other and the actress can never reconcile them. Eva Mendes is nothing more than eye-candy as Tobey's old flame Faith, never allowed to be more than a hottie in a series of tight outfits.