Jennifer Lopez's career has leapt leaps and bounds in the last couple of years. Now she's starring in her first lead role in a movie which should more than break even.

That doesn't mean it's a good film. It's okay but far from great.

How do I look now? Better?

As you might expect when you cross a pop star with a director whose credits include REM's "Losing My Religion", there's plenty of gloss, not a lot of plot.

Lopez plays Catherine Deane, a child psychotherapist. She has a rather unconventional way of finding out the source of people's problems. She virtually gets inside their head.

Suffice to say she's called in to enter the mind of serial killer Carl Stargher (D'Onofrio), who has entered a comatose state but still has his latest victim trapped in a tank that's slowly filling with water.

Could we make a pop video now?

So the film becomes a race against time and a great excuse to introduce a range of weird and wonderful imagery.

The trouble is the vassals take precedence over the acting and characterisation. One weird sequence follows another, almost to overload.

Jennifer Lopez undoubtedly has a long acting career ahead of her. What she needs next is a film which will push her acting abilities slightly more than The Cell.