People complain about science fiction not being believable, but what's really unbelievable these days is how Hollywood puts up romantic comedies in which women like Reese Witherspoon or Katherine Heigl struggle to find a date or a nice guy willing to go out with them. Please.

But movies are meant to place us in other worlds, so we just roll with it.

This Means War plays a bit like a cross between True Lies and Sweet Home Alabama. Reese Witherspoon has never looked better and plays a sweet, lonely and jilted career woman who was dumped by the man she thought was The One and spends her time constantly working until her best friend (the crude but funny Chelsea Handler) puts her on a computer dating service. It is there that she meets lonely, want-to-be family man, CIA agent Tuck (Tom Hardy), and his best friend, fellow agent, and constant womanizer, FDR Foster (Chris Pine). Both men fall for her sweetness, independence and beauty, and war for her affection ensues.

The spy-action is sharply done, fun but never really thrilling because you never take it too seriously. The romantic chemistry works between Pine and Witherspoon, but not so well between Witherspoon and Hardy. Hardy is a fine actor, but he looks like he is pouting for a Calvin Klein commercial here.

The movie moves swiftly and never really gives you time to get bored or think, which works to its advantage.

Ultimately, the big weakness of the film was it's presentation of romance. The recent trend of presenting women as though they should seek to be as sexually promiscuous as men, strikes me as unromantic, crude and detrimental to the idea of romance. Also, the idea that a constant womanizer is just waiting to be tamed by the "right" woman (who can resist sexual advances for a couple days), is cliched nonsense as well.

Reese Witherspoon's smile and some fun one-liners will make the price of admission more bearable than most of the movies released this year, but the movie never achieves its full potential and is fun, but forgettable.