Girls' Night

Northern accents and wide-eyed astonishment at Las Vegas aside, you could be forgiven that this was a Hollywood weepie rather than the working-class British drama it pretends to be. Brenda Blethyn's and (particularly) Julie Walters' performances are detailed and superb, but the cloying sentimentality (including some sick-making talk of angels) is heaped on to the extent that the film becomes tedious rather than sympathetic.

The first half of Girls' Night is enjoyable for its sheer joie de vivre in the face of serious illness, but after around 45 minutes this is lost in a sea of half-baked ideas, repetitive emotional 'scenes' and irritating semi-fairytale romances which upset the previously realistic atmosphere of the piece.

Other than the performances, something of a shapeless disappointment.