Pitched as a homage to George Cukor’s 1949 classic romantic comedy Adam’s Rib (with Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy), Laws of Attraction is greatly separated from that film’s exceptional timing and sincere comic exploration of a competitive couple of married lawyers. Julianne Moore and Pierce Brosnan play two eligible high-profile New York divorce attorneys drawn together by mutual attraction and court cases. It’s indicative of our time that the screenwriters couldn’t begin to fathom a couple of married lawyers without first explaining away the necessary undertaking of such a relationship. The divulged conflict resolution of Hepburn and Tracy as a committed couple is reduced to Moore and Brosnan trying to find a reason to be together in the first place.

Audrey Woods (Moore) and Daniel Rafferty (Brosnan) are master manipulators in the courtroom, but only Daniel is well versed in the due diligence of keeping up a personal life beyond the courthouse steps. Daniel relies on the age-old tactic of showing up with bed-head and wearing wrinkled clothes for preliminary court proceedings, before coming to the actual trial immaculately dressed and coifed. Audrey, on the other hand, takes the law literally and has a more clinical approach to her work, with just a touch of self-defeating insecurity; she eats junk food to calm her nerves. But when Audrey finds herself unexpectedly on a date with her infuriatingly handsome opponent, she can’t resist instigating a drinking match that guarantees he will get into her panties before sunrise. Unfortunately, Audrey never lets her hair down so far again in the movie as she fends off her feelings for Daniel as much as she keeps his sincere romantic overtures at bay.

The modern battle-of-the-sexes that screenwriters Aline Brosh Mckenna and Robert Harling vaguely allude to is couched as a contest of efficiency between a couple whose true feelings emerge mainly when they’re sauced. This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if the audience were allowed behind that veil of alcohol for a better understanding of how the couple connects romantically.

Audrey and Daniel are representing opposite sides of a divorce case between adulterous rock star Thorne Jamisen (Michael Sheen, Underworld ) and his spunky clothing designer wife, Serena (Parker Posey), that takes them to Ireland to depose the staff of the castle that Serena and Thorne each want. This awkward vacation affords Daniel and Audrey an opportunity to drink and get “married” at a bar where a reenactment of the marriage service between the castle’s original owners attracts sacred vows from our restless couple.

Apart from the script’s lack of funny set pieces is a trumped up game of cat and mouse that Audrey and Daniel play in which he is the smitten pursuer and she is the unwilling dupe to her own weakness. Neither status adequately suits either actor, although both Brosnan and Moore soldier on in an easy fashion that is pleasing if
not absorbing.

Laws Of Attraction (2 Stars)
Directed by Peter Howitt
Starring Julianne Moore, Pierce Brosnan, Parker Posey
(Rated PG-13, 90 mins.)