That old romcom dinner cliche

A film which is much better than you might expect, though not exactly braving the dizzy heights of "good", is Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous. Mainly I liked it for the following reasons:

- I have a bit of a weakness for Sandra Bullock doing funny (as opposed to Sandra Bullock doing serious, which sends me screaming to the hills.)
- Funny Sandra Bullock gets to wear a lot of exceedingly stupid outfits in this film.
- It's a romantic comedy with no romance. SB's character is not rewarded by social acceptance in the form of love at the end of the film, as per every other movie about women; instead she has a make-under, dumps the stupid outfits, goes back to wearing trouser-suits and sensible hair, and makes friends with her equally unglamorous female bodyguard.
- There's a scene set in a Las Vegas bar filled with female impersonators.
- The presence of William Shatner and Abraham Benrubi.

Not enough to get your running to the DVD shop I agree, but say you were ill, and it was being repeated on ITV2, you could do worse than switching it on and seeing if anything in the first twenty minutes made you laugh. Laugh might be too much. Smile, anyway.

Having said that, I couldn't help but notice the egregious inclusion of the one scene that no romantic comedy is complete without: the moment early on where the woman goes back to her empty apartment and eats a lonely dinner while miserable music plays. Think of any romantic comedy you like. Say Sandra Bullock again in the otherwise great fun Two Weeks' Notice, so pathetic that her local Chinese takeaway knows her order by heart. Or Jennifer Lopez in The Wedding Planner with her obsessive compulsive meal, perfectly neatly presented with hospital-corners-folded napkin. (Now seems as good a time as any to mention that The Wedding Planner is so awful I cried at the end from the sheer futility of living a life that had included watching it.) I can't be bothered to list them all, but once you notice, it's impossible to unnotice, and now my heart sinks when the female lead closes the door of her apartment, says hello as often as not to her cat, and the weepy music swells as she opens the fridge.

They have to play the weepy music, because otherwise there's a risk that you might notice that the female lead has a really cool apartment in the centre of a really cool American city - New York, or San Francisco say - and it really doesn't seem like such a miserable option to sit down in front of her really cool product-placement flatscreen TV and stuff her face with delicious food. In fact some might argue that one of the perks of being single and living alone is that you get to eat exactly what you want, when you want, and there is no such thing as table manners. If I ever make a romantic comedy, there will be happy, joyful music when the heroine eats alone, and we will only graduate to the weepy stuff when the batteries of her vibrator have run flat or some heavy boxes need lifting.