Why, oh why, would anyone want to do a remake of Alfie? Yes, I know it’s a “British classic” we’re all meant to love. But watching the director Lewis Gilbert’s 1966 tale of a callous cockney Casanova is like being trapped in a black cab and forced to endure a two-hour lecture by a boastful, smug, moronic and emotionally retarded young driver on the art of bird-bonking and other blokeish matters. So, why bother with a remake? Alfie, which began life as a stage play, was always more of a performance than a film. This time around, we have Jude Law looking and leering straight into the camera like a preening narcissist before a mirror. And he delivers essentially the same laddish lecture Caine did all those years ago. Same faeces, different faces.

That’s not to say that the director, Charles Shyer, and his co- screenwriter, Elaine Pope, haven’t done their best to make the old boy seem fresh and relevant. They’ve moved the action to contemporary New York, where young Brit about town Alfie (Law) is a Prada-wearing limo driver who zooms around on his Vespa checking out the babes of the Big Apple. Interestingly, the dominant stylistic tone here is one of 1960s retro. Alfie is a rat who’s lost his pack. And instead of the cool jazz soundtrack of Sonny Rollins, we get the phoney mid-Atlantic whimperings of that other 1960s lothario, Mick Jagger.

This is a coming-of-age morality tale about a young man who champions the lad credo that the purpose of life is having sexual intercourse with as many women as possible, without any kind of intimacy, commitment or consequences. Many shags later, Alfie decides this isn’t possible, and that there must be something more to life than shagging.

Mistake one was to remake Alfie. Mistake two was to have Shyer direct. He makes anodyne comedies like The Parent Trap and Father of the Bride, and is too nice, too sweet in his sensibility for this film. He’s given us a cleaned-up and sanitised Alfie. Gone is Alfie’s contempt for women, his casual cruelty and chauvinism. Law never refers to women as “it” the way Caine does. There’s nothing dark or nasty about this Alfie. Curiously, he must be the only Brit bad boy in Manhattan who never does cocaine. The film is perfunctory, even prudish, in its depiction of sex and refuses to acknowledge Aids. As for the abortion plot line of the first Alfie, that’s presumably too messy for American audiences.

At least Caine’s Alfie could arouse disgust. He was part man, part monster. Law’s Alfie is no beast, just another selfish, immature boy who will shag anything with a pulse. So what? He tells us that what men really care about is “FBB — face, boobs and bum”. Law looks into the camera and says: “I’m just being honest.” And we’re meant to be shocked by this supposedly daring admission of male desire. Hello, Jude; wakey-wakey, Mr Shyer — this is 2004 and not 1966. We’ve had the whole boom in lad culture and lad magazines, so this is hardly shocking news. Times have changed; the battle of the sexes has got bloodier. Consider the work of Neil LaBute and listen to the debates about male violence and date rape. The bastard bloke has become a common feature in popular culture — just check out the latest cult series from America, Nip/Tuck. And in the post-feminist age of Sex and the City, the idea that women are poor, passive creatures suffering at the hands of the world’s Alfies is passé. It would have been better to make the modern-day Alfie a woman.

As a morality tale, the Alfie story resembles those Sunday tabloid newspapers that pretend to be shocked by immoral behaviour, but offer readers vicarious thrills. Likewise we’re meant to admire Alfie while also condemning him. For this to work, Law has to seduce the entire audience: men have to secretly long to be him and women to want him. But there’s nothing appealing — at least from a man’s point of view — about this Alfie. He’s obviously terrible in bed, and there’s one scene that suggests he’s a closet homosexual — so what’s to admire? And he represents everything women claim to loathe in men: vanity, stupidity, humourlessness. When Law smiles, he exudes a smugness that would make Robbie Williams blush and most women gag.

Law is an actor with a modest talent; but as a screen sex symbol, he clearly belongs in the second division. Physically, he has these little gayish pink lips. And that hair of his! Law is fast on his way to having Phil Collins hair — you know, that little artichoke tuft framed by the receding hairline. He’s the personification of mediocre metrosexual masculinity; a girlie boy for women who should know better. In terms of performance, the person to compare Law with isn’t Michael Caine, but Richard Gere in American Gigolo. If you want to see an actor who can walk the walk, talk the talk and bonk the bonk, while brilliantly capturing the sexiness and swagger of the narcissistic stud, check out Gere’s Julian. He’s the man every man wanted to be. Meanwhile, avoid this forgettable slice of retrophilia.

Alfie, 15, 105 mins, two stars