With a career in commercial free-fall, Jude Law has been looking for a hit and as Britain’s Sexiest Man™, updating Michael Caine’s seminal cad-fest sounded like a sure bet. Alfie revises the gloomy comedy about a man who desperately wants to keep smiling. Commitment-phobic, this Casanova is less predatory than the first, now a needy hedonist who bounces between women in search of one who will make no demands beyond his. As a welcome guest in Alfie’s world, we soon realise that what he really wants is what he already has in part-time girlfriend Julie (Marisa Tomei). His dalliance with Susan Sarandon who dumps him for a younger man is the beginning of a process that starts too late for salvation. As bookends to the sexual revolution, both Alfie’s tell a tragic tale of men who pay a high toll for their refusal to grow up. Where the former was more shocking, the latter is more introspective: abortion vs. careless love, each a reflection of an era that has changed – narcism is no longer a flaw but an accessory, women have choices and make them. With this attitude cemented in a terrific visual styling, Alfie has as much to say about our world as did the original about Caine’s. Unfortunately for Law, it wasn’t enough to capture the hearts or minds of audiences or critics in a colder time unsympathetic to Alfie’s concerns – the film a casualty of the world it describes. Yet sociological comparisons between the two are largely pointless. Like plain or ribbed, you don’t need to know the former to appreciate the latter, each a satisfyingly sweet and sadly funny experience.

// COLIN FRASER