A Stitch in Time

Beauty may only be skin deep, but there is no excuse for not having that skin look picture perfect. At least that's what Australian Lette (Dead Sexy, Fetal Attraction) leads you to believe in this largely uninspiring comedy. British television newsreader Lizzie McPhee is poised to enter a life of inevitable crow's feet and cellulite when, the night of her 39th birthday, she catches her surgeon husband Hugo lip-locked with a TV star. Soon, she loses her job to a handsome younger man and Hugo segues his practice from facial reconstruction to high-paying plastic surgery procedures. With her shallow - yet beautiful - older sister constantly nagging Lizzie about her looks, who can blame her for feeling threatened by younger women and, eventually, considering some permanent cosmetic alterations of her own? Not only would Lizzie feel better about herself, but she just might win back her husband's affections. Unfortunately, Lette's focus on the conundrums of female beauty is so narrow and unrelenting that her characters, varied as they are, exist entirely in service of this conceit and find themselves bumbling from one campy, melodramatic scene to another.