A glossy look at what women want

REESE Witherspoon, everyone's favourite chipper go-getter from Election (1999) and Legally Blonde (2001), has aged into the jobless 40-year-old single parent Alice Kinney of Home Again.

No need to feel sorry for Alice, though, because everyone - especially Alice - in this annoyingly facile romantic comedy is white and privileged and living lives airbrushed of reality's hardships.

Alice has recently separated from her New York music executive husband. With her two young daughters (Lola Flanery and Eden Grace Redfield) she moves back to her Los Angeles hometown, into her late father's house that is nothing less than a sprawling hacienda.