Your Friends And Neighbours

Romanticism is toast. Long live sex. Except blokes are useless in bed, and/or bastards, while birds are bored in bed, and/or gagging for it (with someone else). Welcome to the modern world! Neil LaBute writes dialogue that eats your underwear. Both In The Company Of Men - his debut guys-are-shite movie - and Your Friends And Neighbors have scripts to strip naked to. His view of the human condition would cause heart attacks at the Care Share Clinic. Anyone with a smidgen of romance about their person had better stay in and watch Sleepless In Meg Ryan's Linen Cupboard.

There are six characters, two married, one loose and abusing, the other AC/DC. The fellas play squash and talk truth-or-Ruth in the locker room. The weedy academic (Ben Stiller) makes a pass at his buddy's wife (Amy Brenneman). The buddy (Aaron Eckhart) confesses that he can't beat a DIY orgasm, while Dr Psycho Control (Jason Patric), the creep without a conscience, tells a tale of schoolboy rape that would have Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh puking behind the settee. The ladies are locked and blocked. Marital sex has the excitement of yesterday's rice pudding. They need topping up. They go looking.

LaBute thinks the act of love is an oxymoron. If he wasn't so acerbic and witty, you would wash your hands, walk out and become a monk. As it is, you stay and applaud. P.S. Don't take your partner. Whatever happens, you'll have a row.