This Charlize Theron/Keanu Reeves remake of 1968’s Sweet November will teach all who see it a valuable lesson: Annoying plus model-beautiful equals cute and lovable. Or maybe it’s that jerk attracts jerk. Those are the only explanations for the lovey-dovey coupling that eventually takes place between Theron’s “eccentric” Sara (she sits on his expensive car! she stalks him! she yells embarrassing accusations at him in front of his neighbors when he refuses to give her a ride!) and Reeves’ I-am-God Nelson, genius workaholic ad exec. Yes, she throws out his watch and gives away his clothes, and he storms out of her apartment when he tries too aggressively to hook up with her and she asks him to take it easy, yet all this is really a fine romance waiting to happen. The premise: Sara, after meeting Nelson at a DMV exam that he helps her get kicked out of, offers to take him into her apartment, her life, and her heart for one month. During this month, he cannot work, and she will teach him how to love life again. He refuses; she persists. After one particularly calamitous day in which Nelson loses all that’s important to him, he agrees to spend time with her (after all, she may be nuts, but she’s a babe): first a day, then a couple of weeks, and then…Soon Sara and Nelson are running on the beach and listening to Enya, even though he still blows up every now and then when she does something a little too wacky for his taste. Although this is Reeves and Theron’s second pairing (they were believable and even enviable as husband and wife in The Devil’s Advocate), the chemistry that should crackle during their many belligerent encounters—not to mention the irresistible attraction upon which the plot is dependent—is painfully lacking. And its absence turns what could have been a sweetly sentimental distraction into a schmaltz-in-the-city waste of time. —Tricia Olszewski