The Accidental Husband, review - Telegraph Griffin Dunne's The Accidental Husband is chock-full of resolution, and in the most intensely predictable of ways. Uma Thurman plays Dr Emma Lloyd, a New York relationships counsellor with a popular radio show in which she dispenses bossy advice on other people's relationships. A rather stupid woman named Sophia calls in, and Dr Emma carelessly advises her to ditch her fireman fiancé Patrick (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). An enraged Patrick subsequently vows to give Dr Emma a taste of the misery she has just dispensed. Although Emma, too, is engaged, he allows the computer-hacker son of his landlord to tinker with the on-line marriage licence documents so that it appears that she is already married - to him. As Emma sets forth to remedy the confusion she finds herself falling for Patrick, who draws her into a down-to-earth world of blue-collar bars and neighbourly parties. Thurman doesn't quite convince in this role: she simply oscillates wildly between a dictatorial Manhattan princess with her perfectly mannered English fiancé Richard (Colin Firth) and a kittenish good time girl with Patrick. The film is built on the conceit that women find firemen irresistibly sexy, and thus there is great emphasis on Patrick's profession and earthy passions. He's forever sailing around atop his fire truck, or performing burly, masterful embraces, and we even get a brief glimpse of his tattoo, like a teasing peep of a Victorian lady's stocking. None of it works: the inexplicable alchemy between co-stars that can seduce the audience even in an indifferent rom-com doesn't arise between Thurman and Morgan. Despite the tattoo, Patrick has been assiduously neutered of any dangerous sexual edge. He has two facial expressions: amiable and equable, with the latter kicking in when something really bad happens. Next to Colin Firth's Richard, however, Patrick is a maelstrom of intense feeling. Winston Churchill once accused Ramsay MacDonald of resembling a circus attraction called The Boneless Wonder. That description drifted into my head every time I glimpsed the endlessly obliging Richard, until by the end of the film he is not only boneless, but positively liquefied. Sadly, I myself was travelling in the opposite direction: as the credits rolled, I discovered that my heart had turned to stone.