Wicker Park

REVIEW
This "Melrose Place"-lite drama, based on the 1996 French film L'Appartement, was mismarketed as a thriller and left most theaters within a week. It's easy to see why. Hartnett plays an unhappily engaged man who still pines for the love of his life -- who vanished without an explanation two years earlier. When he thinks he glimpses her at a restaurant, his investigation leads him to a woman with the same first name, perfume and style. What's going on here? Sadly, the answer is strictly third-tier soap opera (The Vanishing it ain't). This moribund snoozer is given a boost by Lillard as Hartnett's unlucky-in-love best friend (and the only likable character in the film). Kruger is so dull you'll wonder why Hartnett is whining so damned much about her disappearance. Director McGuigan injects some much-needed directorial flourishes in a vain attempt to keep the viewer's attention away from the glacial pacing and weak writing. An uninvolving, way overlong waste of time.