Blow Dry is supposedly "based on a screenplay by Simon Beaufoy". But the rewrites are uncredited and Beaufoy has understandably distanced himself from this idea he once had for a ropey, unfunny underdog comedy of loveable British littleness. The premise is the World Hairdressing Championships held in Keighley, Yorkshire - something that can only remind us of The Big Tease, Craig Ferguson's 1999 comedy on the same subject.

Alan Rickman plays a once-brilliant hairdresser now in grumpy semi-retirement after his wife ran off with his (female) model. His face is permanently set in an expression of frosty hauteur as if he's thinking about the script, or just wondering what the hell he's doing there.

The distinctly heterosexual-looking Natasha Richardson and Rachel Griffiths are woefully miscast as his missus and her squeeze, and the young American actor Josh Hartnett, playing Rickman's teenage son, gives the worst British accent ever recorded on celluloid. "Eeeeee, me dad's gaaawwwwn ter do soom cuttin'," he says, sounding like Dick Van Dyke's Yorkshire lovechild.