There comes a time in every small-screen heart-throb's life when television seems an inadequate vehicle for their talents. This has something to do with personal growth, with pushing back the boundaries of self-fulfilment. It's also about money, and the annoying way TV flits frantically between plots, forcing each sex symbol to share the limelight with the others involved. These days there'll be at least six of them, running the gamut of sex, colour and creed, the marketing executives being intent upon maximising a show's potential market. They've even done it with the resurgent Wombles.

So for any wannabe cinematic godhead it's best to use the down-seasons constructively, and Jennifer Aniston, known to millions of Friends aficionados as Rachel -- the one with the easily imitable hairstyle who loves her best buddy's brother but can't help sleeping with any guy capable of cutely scrunching up their nose while simultaneously smiling -- has been busy.

Her latest, The Object Of My Affection, is just what you'd expect in these days of deliberately convoluted sexual tomfoolery, with Aniston playing a counsellor for kids as they tentatively enter the mating game. Her character seems a decent sort but is, as ever, undone by circumstances. Refusing to move in with her arrogant, insecure boyfriend Vince, she instead opts to co-habit with George (Paul Rudd), a gay primary school teacher with the looks, if not the smug narcissism, of the young Nicholas Clay. George, despite his gargantuan niceness, is a loser in love; so, after a few weeks chatting, dancing and sharing tubs of Haaegen-Dazs, he begins to fall for Aniston's charms. Vince is naturally unimpressed with this arrangement, especially as Aniston is pregnant with his child, but George is well in there and decides he wouldn't mind a go at this dad lark.

But then he meets Paul, a young actor under the wing and, one assumes, often under the whole heaving mass of theatre critic Nigel Hawthorne. This is love and George must follow, despite having heard the heartbeat of Aniston's unborn child. The Object Of My Affection meanders badly and its point appears to be that life is complicated but -- hey -- it'll all be okay in the end. Oh, and girls, don't fall for gay guys -- they're gay. For a wittier and slightly deeper take on the subject, you'd do far better with Chasing Amy.

Aniston herself has expanded her repertoire. Or rather she better understands the merits of restraint. Though she does freak out, manhandle her handbag and express her rage by marching primly around in tight circles, she has moved on from the likes of last year's Picture Perfect. There she played an advertising woman keen to get on, and keener still to sleep with the ferociously suave and manipulative Kevin Bacon. In order to impress the boss, she claims to be engaged to a good-guy acquaintance (Jay Mohr) and is forced to elicit his help in prolonging the pretence. As the farce builds she freaks and manhandles and gurns wildly, while finding plenty of opportunity to stare in horrified bemusement (hand neatly over mouth), and gaze blindly into space with a silent, sentimental "Aaaaah" -- Rachel characteristics all.

It's grotesque stuff with a suitably grim final, in which Aniston and her acquaintance beau announce their love in the middle of someone else's wedding ceremony.

Ridding yourself of the qualities that made you a heart-throb in the first place is a brave but necessary move. Antonio Banderas only finally lost his moody upwards scowl in The Mask Of Zorro, George Clooney his seductive little-boy-lost expression in Out Of Sight (some time coming -- he'd earlier summoned an uncalled-for necrophiliac frisson by making this face at Albert The Butler's deathbed in Batman And Robin). David Caruso, like Clooney another TV star with Hollywood aspirations, took on a hard-man image for Kiss Of Death and King Of New York to wretched effect.

So maybe it's best taken gradually, and this is the approach chosen by Jason Priestley from Beverly Hills 90210. In Love And Death On Long Island he stays out of the fray wherever possible, engaging in brief frat-boy comedy but mostly just sitting beside John Hurt as the wrinkly thespian emotes with abandon. Hurt plays a writer removed from society, who is lonely now that his wife has passed away. The Death in the title refers hilariously to his character, Doctor Giles De'Ath (pronounced Day-Ath). Accidentally catching a showing of Hotpants College 2, he forms an obsession with star Priestley whom he trails to his home on Long Island where he befriends the B-movie actor and his girlfriend, and tempts them with a highbrow script that's supposed to be inspirationally original, but sounds a lot like Being There or Bad Boy Bubby.

Unfortunately, the movie indulges itself by concentrating on Hurt's absurd introduction to the late 20th century (video recorders, good Lord; UHT milk -- whatever next), and ignores his doomed struggle with Priestley's suspicious other half.

The truth is, Priestley has no chance to shine here. Where Aniston has learned restraint, Priestley's is forced upon him as Hurt increasingly overshadows him. And when he does act, he resorts to the same tearful expression of pity he'd exhibit if he heard Shannen Doherty was up the duff. Eventually, what with all the American poetry-quoting going on, you wish De'Ath's error had been to go in search of Walt Whitman.