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Out of 5:

What’s it all about? The catchphrase and theme song to the film classic Alfie is a fair summation of this mediocre remake of a sixties classic.

Jude Law reprises Michael Caine’s classic role in this reworking which sees the film injected with some glamour and Jude Law-esque smouldering good looks, with varying degrees of success.

Alfie is a morally challenged young Englishman (with requisite cheeky-chappy accent) working as a limo driver in New York, where he works the streets of Manhattan and works his charms on his customers. The lonely wives, the heiresses, and the tripped-out party girls, they’re all conquests for Alfie, who’s not averse to a quickie in the backseat should the opportunity present itself. But please, no word of commitment.

It’s all about Number One as he scoots from one dysfunctional relationship to another, using and discarding women, while at the same time remaining strangely likeable. But then these things happen when you look like Jude Law.

Then things begin to unravel. There’s his best friend’s girlfriend, a messed up party-girl, some unlikely health issues and, shock horror, even regret, before he finally meets his match in a sugar mommy played admirably by Susan Sarandon (“He may be wearing a ring, but he’s not my husband”).

This is a movie about selfishness, self-discovery and how not to behave. Sadly, it falls completely flat. Prada shoes and Jude Law’s pulling power aside, one can’t help wondering what exactly possessed Charles Shyer to want to remake this movie. Caine’s performance in the original has been hailed as one of his best ever, arguably the making of his career, so it was always going to be difficult to match up.

Shyer contrasts the glitz and glamour of the Manhattan highlife with the pale washed out reality of the products of Alfie’s choices, and some retro-style split screen pastiches recall sixties style cinema. But apart from an admirable performance by Sarandon, it’s a dull, plodding affair.

Law does a passable job as the morally challenged anti-hero, and the extended monologues delivered to camera that marked the original are there too. But where Caine’s Alfie was almost sinister, Law just comes across as superficial. By the time Alfie reaches his predictable denouement one can’t help wondering not so much “what’s it all about” as “what’s the point exactly?”