Remaking a Hollywood film from the past should have an easy recipe for success. The story is already written for you, so you shouldn't have to do too much to update it. Add a talented cast, a competent director to call the shots while putting a bit of a creative spin on it to make it stand on its own and everything should fall into place.

So can someone tell me what the hell happened with Jonathan Demme's remake of Charade, The Truth About Charlie?

Regina Lambert (Thandie Newton) meets Joshua Peters (Mark Wahlberg) while vacationing in Martinique, as she contemplates ending her whirlwind marriage to her husband Charlie (Stephen Dillane). But upon her return to Paris, she finds that both her apartment and her bank account have been emptied, and Charlie has been murdered. A trio of his old cohorts (Joonh-Hoon Park, Ted Levine, Lisa Gay Hamilton) has begun shadowing her in hopes of answering their own questions about Charlie and recovering a bundle of missing cash. Conveniently, Joshua is in Paris now too; ready to offer any help he can to Reggie.

The more Reggie learns, the more she must find out to figure exactly what is going on. Joshua begins to make some moves on her, even as disturbing information about him surfaces and undermines her trust. Commandant Dominique (Christine Boison), a local detective, thinks Reggie herself is the most likely suspect. While the attentions of an embassy official (Tim Robbins) make Reggie's situation (and the plot) even more complicated.

Had this film been the result of a music-video hack fresh off the MTV Express, I could understand how it turned out so badly. But a bonehead like McG (Charlie's Angels) or Simon West (Tomb Raider) didn't direct this. Jonathan Demme, a more than competent filmmaker, did. Demme can't decide if he is making a light-hearted romantic comedy or a gritty espionage thriller, indecisiveness that is accentuated even more by the migraine-inducing visual tone concocted by the director and his longtime (and usually reliable) cinematographer Tak Fujimoto.

The screenplay, credited to Demme and three other people (read: massive rewrites), is equally a mess. The story's multiple twists and turns are more confusing than clever, the jokes labored and unfunny and the characters are so slight that, aside from the leads, you might have trouble keeping up with who is who and what they're doing.

Newton definitely has the appeal (and looks) to fit into Audrey Hepburn's shoes (for this role at least), but she still comes off as being completely lost amid the film's identity crisis. Robbins is quite amusing to watch even if he does go over the top once too often. Ted Levine, an alumnus of Demme's Silence Of The Lambs, is also fun to watch in his brief role as one of the thugs after Reggie. Alas, Wahlberg, as he did in the remake of Planet Of The Apes, comes off as a bland leading man. He may look the part, but that's pretty much about it.

The truth about Charlie? It's a waste of time and talent. Avoid.

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