Sometimes an unspectacular, low-key movie is kinda fun to watch. Such is the case with Birthday Girl, a likely candidate for the thriller/drama Hall of Mediocrity. Any smart moviegoer can see this flick's twists and turns coming from a mile away. And it's no secret the movie sat on Miramax's shelf for two years, an indication the studio probably lost any confidence it had in the project in the first place. Because of signs like this, Birthday Girl became an easy target for critics. However, despite its lack of originality or true spark, Birthday Girl not only possesses a mean streak that frequently comes into play during the film's key moments but also a sense of fun -- a slightly airy approach which keeps the movie from becoming a complete waste of time. 

John Buckingham (Ben Chaplin) is your average Joe, a mild-mannered bank clerk who secretly wishes to escape the small, English town and the ant-ridden house he's lived in all his life. Because he lacks social skills and experience with women, John finds himself checking out potential mates on a website called "From Russia With Love," where he finds and orders a mail-order bride. But when John picks up Nadia (Nicole Kidman) at the airport, he finds she's not the fluent-in-English, clean-as-a-whistle package promised him; instead, she can't understand a word John says, and she smokes like a chimney. Despite their differences, John decides to let Nadia stay (after she shows an affinity for sexual promiscuity). 

Days pass, and Nadia slowly seems to be grasping the English language. She even tells John that it's her birthday, but before she can blow out the candles, in come her "cousin" (Mathieu Kassovitz) and his buddy (Vincent Cassel). Thus begins a very strange time in John's life, where lives are eventually put at stake, revelations occur every minute, and something happens that forces John to rob his own bank.

Flicks like Birthday Girl usually have strong futures as $7 DVD's at Best Buy. There's almost nothing to go on here but star power and chemistry alone, with Nicole Kidman and Ben Chaplin, two charming actors, working like gerbils on those little wheels to make sure you get as much entertainment for your money as possible.

Not that I don't appreciate Birthday Girl trying something new with its airy material, but whenever director/co-writer Jez Butterworth brings something unique to the table, it's rough around the edges and hard to swallow. I refer not only to the complicated backstory behind Nadia and her two Russian friends, but also to the fact that Ben Chaplin's character actually calls the website and asks to send her back. Puh-leez. I can live with someone who smokes and doesn't speak a word of English, and if she looks like Nicole Kidman, I wouldn't even touch the phone. There are also various twists, turns, and obligatory "Oh, whoop-de-doo" revelations that transpire after Birthday Girl's first half-hour. But by this time, viewers are way ahead of Butterworth and know what's going to happen. 

It's the movie's first couple of scenes that give Birthday Girl its edge. In comparison to the rest of the film, the beginning 30 or so minutes are rather interesting. Butterworth starts you off thinking this is going to be a quirky romantic comedy, and for while, that's what the flick succeeds at being. The premise sounds like the beginning of a bad joke or a tabloid headline (English guy meets silent Russian chick who fulfills his porno pleasures), but Chaplin plays the perplexed John quite charmingly, and Kidman, fresh off her one-two punch of Moulin Rouge and The Others, plays Nadia with seductive gusto. Birthday Girl even maintains a little of this quirkiness throughout the last two acts, which, after playing the romantic angle for a while, shifts into thriller mode, dragging the audience with it.

Although I had the entire movie figured out by the time the starting credits ended, a few well-paced elements managed to surprise me. Cassel and Kassovitz are simultaneously threatening (in a convincing, non-over-the-top way) and laugh-out-loud hilarious; one minute, they have a guy tied up in the bathroom, and in the next, they're critiquing a production of "Cats" they once saw. I was also amused by what may come to be a cinematic rarity: a moment in which the hero pursues a car on foot, running all the way from the airport, across the highway, and to the hotel where his objective is located. Bursts of creative energy like this happen once in a while throughout the film, just not enough to bring the rest of the story up from the doldrums of mediocrity, where it seems comfortable just being a low-profile erotic/suspense/romantic comedy.

MY RATING: ** ½ (out of ****)

(Released by Miramax and rated "R" sexuality and language.)

Review also posted at www.ajhakari.com.