A film that laughably puts forth Julia Roberts yet again, as 1) art historian, 2) woman with a brain, 3)intellectual leader of young women, should signal to anyone that this film can be easily missed. Marketing, casting directors, and studio big bucks have made a cretin public think this woman can act, much less, earn an Oscar, but Mona Lisa Smile should be the wakeup call for the Academy to ask Ms. Roberts to return her statuette. Like Halle Berry's summer debacle, Catwoman, MLS suggests Roberts can assume any role with credibility, and that audiences will spend money to see her flash her overbite. Not so. In a chick's flick variation on Robin William's boy school foray, Mona Lisa Smile repeats the same premise with the same snobby atmosphere of preppy girls whose boobs are bigger than their brains.

Leading the pack of status conscious bimbos is Kirsten Dunst whose close-minded shrewish presence has not rhyme nor reason for her bad attitude toward all, but justifies why her new groom takes any and all opportunity to desert her at the prom. Why her friends would want to be around her is never explained for she is neither generous nor a friend. Maggie Guillenhall(sp) continues to play the slag, and Julia Stiles, can easily pass for the role of young Martha Stewart.

A silly, unoriginal premise find Ms. Roberts a first year professor of art history with a class of over-achievers, if they only knew they had something to achieve beyond the role of trophy wives in training. Being privileged, country club trained, Mame Eisenhower clones may have been the standard for 1953, but only for a small percent of the female population. Seeing these women ponder liberation is not only uninteresting, but the actors who play the shallow belles provide nothing to their roles that would make them worthy of screen time.

The Mona Lisa Smile reinforces Hollywood film factory pablum with standardized, cookie- cutter blondeness that ultimately turns the film into a bland and unpalatable mush. It insults the modernist paintings that Ms. Roberts character tries to advance before her dull-minded class