'HEY, JUDE , what's this remake-update all about?" you want to ask, sometime around the moment Alfie's waggish wisecracks fade. Sure, it's about Jude Law's streamlined golden-boy charm as the title character, rolled neatly into those fitted, pink tailored shirts, and testing it against the soulful obliviousness of the original, Michael Caine. And obviously in our tabloid universe, it's also about gawking at Law's new girlfriend, Sienna Miller, taking the role of the almost perfect dolly bird once played by Jane Asher, then the much-envied squeeze of Paul McCartney. It's all so deliciously cozy and sexy, innit?

This Alfie's director-producer-cowriter Charles Shyer obviously identifies far too acutely with Caine's cockney cad in high-'60s hump mode and can only go so far in contemporizing the bleak original's so-called comedy about a rake's progress toward developing a conscience – or simply some sense of consciousness. Shyer initially seems determined to mimic the zippy style and groovy glamour shots of Richard Lester, layering on the winky freeze-frames, playing with varied color palettes, and relying on the Law of eye candy, as the star chats up the camera like a lad-mag pundit holding forth on the mythic zipless fuck. Although Shyer and cowriter Elaine Pope attempt to bring this archetypal tale from the front lines of the sexual revolution into the '00s by matching Alfie with, say, his best friend's black girlfriend, Lonette (Nia Long) – a tryst that generates more heat than all of Law's scenes with Miller combined – they don't, unlike a certain feckless protagonist, go all the way. The Mach 2004 Alfie should be bi, at the very least, to double his dating options – otherwise, what's all the fuss about? (Kimberly Chun)