KEEP your friends close, but your enemies closer.

So say carefree temp Charlotte 'Charlie' Cantilini (Jennifer Lopez), the heroine of Robert Luketic's bloody battle of the sexes.

Having almost given up on the search for Mr Right, Charlie falls madly in love with handsome and charming doctor Kevin Fields (Michael Vartan). He is the man of Charlie's dreams: kind, generous, well groomed, successful and gorgeously romantic.

Before wedding bells peal, Charlie is invited to meet Kevin's mother, recently fired national news anchorwoman Viola (Jane Fonda).

From the moment Charlie steps nervously into Viola's luxurious abode, the young woman realises that she will be inheriting the mother-in-law from hell.

Viola is none too impressed by Charlie either: she may have lost her job to a younger, cuter, blonder woman but there is no way she going to lose her one and only son as well.

Aided by her long-time, long suffering assistant Ruby (Wanda Sykes), Viola executes a series of crazy schemes to scare Charlie off.

As the rivalry between the two women intensifies, Charlie decides to fight back, encouraged by girl pal Morgan (Annie Parisse) and gay best friend Remy (Adam Scott).

Shell-shocked Kevin finds himself caught in the crossfire between the two women he loves most. It's Prada handbags and thrift shop glad rags at dawn: in the red corner J-Lo; in the blue corner J-Fo.

Seconds out...

Written by Anya Kochoff, Monster-In-Law is proof positive that when it comes to affairs of the heart, women are anything but the fairer sex.

The delicious premise - an oestrogen-fuelled War Of The Roses - provides a couple of hysterical sequences, including Viola playing on Charlie's allergies by spiking some gravy with crushed nuts.

And when the two women finally trade physical blows, it descends into succession of slaps and upper cuts.

Unfortunately, in order to engineer a sickly happy ever after, Kochoff has to play safe and compel us to sympathise with both women.

As a result, Kevin has scant screen time and we're ultimately left wondering why two grown women would end up fighting over the same two-dimensional beefcake.

Lopez is so sweet, adorable and perky you can almost understand Viola's sudden urge to shove Charlie's face in a celebration cake.

Fonda has lots of fun with her role but the script doesn't provide her with enough devastating one-liners, and while she looks amazing for 67, emotion doesn't always register on her face.

To compensate, she screeches and cackles every other line. Subtlety is not one of Monster-In-Law's strong points. Truthfully, what is?

Updated: 09:23 Friday, May 13, 2005