Grade: D+

Verdict: Two excellent actors and a thoughtful thesis are done in by a ridiculous plot.

Details: Starring Stockard Channing, Julia Stiles and Frederick Weller. Directed by Patrick Stettner. Rated R for language and sexual situations. One hour, 23 minutes.

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Review: "The Business of Strangers" has been called a distaff version of Neil LaBute's brilliantly cutting "In the Company of Men."

It's not.

First off, it's not about the war between men and women, but the war between women and women. Second, it's neither brilliant or cutting.

Neophyte writer/diector Patrick Stettner gets things off to a terrific start. We watch Julie (Stockard Channing) on her usual rounds as a corporate vice president. We follow her through the sterile airport in some anonymous city. We see her conduct a presentation in a sterile corporate conference room. Eventually she lands up at a sterile airport hotel with its demographically mandated "cozy" hotel bar and the sleek, privileged anonymity of a big suite with a minibar and a fireplace.

However, on this day, two things are different. One, her technical assistant, Paula (Julia Stiles) is 45 minutes late meaning the presentation is a bust. Paula protests her plan was late but Julie fires her on the spot. Then, Julie learns that her boss is flying in for a brief meeting. Convinced it's a pink-slip visit, she contacts an executive headhunter named Nick (Frederick Weller) who has all kinds of opportunities for her. In Japan.

In the movie's first 15 minutes, Stettner has masterfully sketched out an entity that's become all too common in the last 20 years: the family-less career woman who's married to her job. Julie's only phone calls come from her secretary and her shrink. When she gets some good news, these are the only two people she can share it with. It's a pitiless portrait, stunning in its acuity. So, we wonder, we know exactly who she is; what's going to happen?

What happens is that Stettner spends the rest of the film telling us what he's already shown us so incisively in those opening scenes.

Elated by her good fortune, Julie heads to the bar where she spots Paula, who's been forced into a layover. Overflowing with benificence, Julie rehires her and offers to buy her a drink. And then a couple of drinks.

So far, not bad. Settling in with Paula is a little bit of a stretch since Julie comes off as a more private type. And besides, wouldn't all her underlings at the office be calling her to brown-nose? Still, you can see how, in the emotional rush of what's happened, she might hang with Paula for a bit.

They go to Julie's suite for more drinks, go work out at the gym, embarrass an elevator full of male businessmen with dildo small-talk. But Paula becomes so insolent and heartlessly intrusive on Julie's non-existent personal life that any sane person would send her packing.

However, Stettner wants to pursue some power games between the two. Again, not a bad idea. Exploring the chasm between women who fought to work outside the home and a younger generation who take their opportunities for granted and see their older colleagues as somewhat pitiful is a great topic for a movie.

Unfortunately, the way he goes about this is ludicrous. Nick re-enters the picture and suddenly Paula and Julie are Lucy and Ethel with a male-bashing agenda and a lesbian subtext. The film begins to remind you of those silly early '70s agitprop theaters. You can see the poster: The What Women Want Collective presents, "Hot Flashes Can Lead to Attempted Murder."

The tragedy is that both the leads are so very, very good. Channing deserves a Best Actress Oscar nomination (and may still get one) She grasps Julie's brittle defensiveness as well as her depressing vulnerability.

Stiles doesn't have the same experience but she certainly holds her own as she conveys Paula's cool-eyed manipulations. In fact, she's so unsettling that you still can't imagine that Julie could possibly be inecure enopugh or drunk enough or both to keep her around.

Stettner had a nifty idea for a movie, one that exposes "sisterhood's" dirty little secrets. And he had the talent (visually and verbally) as well the powerhouse cast to make something exceptional, something strikingly original. Instead, he's given us two amazing performances in search of a halfway decent script.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution