A Regrettable Charade

A pretty Parisian widow is menaced by grisly thugs and wooed by a mysterious man who may want only the money she has but can't find. In 1963 this was a recipe for Stanley Donen's romantic thriller Charade , with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Now it's a sorry mess called The Truth About Charlie . From Grant and Hepburn in Charade to Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton in Charlie , the charisma drop is steeper than that of Martha Stewart's stock price. Director Jonathan Demme's jittery mélange is shot in punishing close-ups by a Ritalin-deprived camera circling the actors like a Formula One...

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