ONE GETS used to watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing, unspeakably dull movies in this line of work, and the longer you've been at it, the less easily pissed-off you become - but every once in a while, something comes along that practically makes you pine for a re-run of Police Academy 4.

For all its sumptuous visual finery, Tea With Mussolini had me gnashing my teeth and yearning dearly for the exits before it had run even half an hour of its interminable course. Embodying the unacceptable upper-crust face of cinema like no movie since Peter's Friends, this noxious work - directed with all the requisite visual splendour by Franco Zeffirelli - is set in Rome over a ten-year timescale, commencing somewhere in the early '30s.

Its heroes (Dame Judi Dench, and several more where she came from) are a bunch of aristocratic English diplomats whose lives become ever-so-slightly inconvenienced as Fascist darkness settles over Italy, and the storm clouds of war begin to gather on the horizon. On occasion, I could barely believe my eyes and ears. Though Tea With Mussolini moves at such a snail's pace its primary purpose appears to be to lure people into a coma, it's just about possible to discern some rambling outline of a plot.

The point seems to be that Dame Judi and her cohorts are having an awfully hard time, and our sympathy should gush out towards them - hold on a fucking minute, can we get some perspective here? These characters seem to spend the entire movie having ostentatious dinner parties, buying Picasso paintings, and bellyaching about such hellish misfortunes as the loss of their diplomatic immunity. My heart fucking bleeds, really. In the real world, when the human cost of WWII is totted up, it's fair to say that the mild and temporary disruption of a few obscenely wealthy lives does not in all honesty merit even a footnote, never mind a fucking film.

If I haven't already done enough to dissuade you from watching the film, I would respectfully warn you that Cher makes an appearance, and it is the single most insufferable display of vain OTT luvviedom I have ever witnessed. Ever. This plastic prima-donna doesn't seem to have the faintest inkling how to age gracefully - which might be okay if she didn't insist on claiming the centre of attention. Her performance here makes Robin Williams look like a model of dignity and restraint, and her version of 'Smoke Gets In Your Eyes' was the straw that finally broke my soul - and sent me screaming to the exits.