Aside from the embarrassingly sensual shot of melted ice cream oozing over blueberries in the opening credits, My Blueberry Nights (April 4) is so cock-blockingly asexual and mundane, it's hard to imagine this "date movie" inspiring even a late-night solo trip to PornTube. But then what else could be expected from a film that focuses on a relationship between Jude Law and Norah Jones? Sure, the two café-working lonelyhearts are part of a larger snapshot of wayward lovers, alcoholics, and gambling addicts, but not even those salty topics can save the movie from being droll. This film, it is bad.

As the editing is based almost exclusively on the use of slow-motion, the film plays like a Klonopin-mixed-with-red-wine buzz—which, as delightful as that may sound to some, is only nauseatingly distracting.

The story (the characters' names are forgettable, let's go with the stars'): After calling it quits on her cheating boyfriend, Norah attaches herself to the ever-attentive Jude to help her work through her break up. When this doesn't work, Norah high-tails it out of New York to work at greasy spoons and dive bars out west, as she saves money for a car and writes Jude achingly emotional post cards. Then Norah returns to Jude, he licks blueberry pie off her face, and we're dismissed.

Director Wang Kar Wai's movie whiffs of a self-important student film, and none of the characters or scenes seem independently rendered: a shot of Law's character, Jeremy, eating a sandwich is given the same cinematic treatment as a pivotal car crash. The intention seems to be to make viewers feel as though something epic is always about to happen. It doesn't.

Poor acting and stilted, implausible dialogue (every bit of which tries to pack in innumerous earth-shattering realizations) doesn't help matters. My Blueberry Nights is helped by the brief appearance of Natalie Portman, who plays a poker-faced, peroxide-headed wheeler-dealer whose quick quips seem like they were written by someone uninvolved with the rest of the script. Maybe wait for her clips to appear online?