FOR THOSE WHO lament that, after Lords of Dogtown and Brokeback Mountain, Heath Ledger can no longer be looked upon as just another pretty face – fear not, he still can. Delivering the lightweight performance one might have expected from the star of A Knight's Tale – if nothing since – he's merely decorative as the centerpiece of this bonbon. Directed by Lasse Hallström (likewise reverting to the level of Chocolat rather than What's Eating Gilbert Grape or The Cider House Rules), Casanova is the kind of strenuously farcical "romp" that frisks and preens about like an ox under the delusion that it's a show pony. As history's most notorious womanizer, a smirking Ledger hardly seems to have a drop of real licentiousness in him – but then the heavily contrived script by Jeffrey Hatcher (of the identically imitative, faux-witty Stage Beauty) and Kimberly Simi is rigged so he almost immediately wants to reform, for love of a spunky little wouldn't-you-know-it protofeminist (dull Sienna Miller). Unfortunately, (a) she despises his kind, (b) she's already betrothed to a rich fatso (Oliver Platt, getting some laughs), and (c) Casanova has already proposed to the nearest virgin in order to save himself from being executed as a heretic and fornicator by (d) the Inquisition, represented by a Jeremy Irons so monumentally arch he might be channeling Rosalind Russell. Thus ensue mistaken and false identities, cross-dressing, comedic torture, gratuitous pratfalls, the least suspenseful near-hanging in screen history, and a really stupid final burst of Pirates of the Caribbean-style action. Even if you can choke down the colossal suspensions of disbelief required, this is a film more crude than clever, more pandering than pleasing (unless you're really easy – uh, did you like Chocolat?). It gracelessly lifts ideas whole not just from Shakespeare in Love, but from actual Shakespeare. A big however: Casanova just might be the prettiest movie of the year. Its 18th-century Venice is so gorgeous in costume (Jenny Beavan), production design (David Gropman), and photography (Oliver Stapleton) that sensory pleasure almost trumps tedium. I said almost. (Dennis Harvey)