REVIEWED - NEW YORK MINUTE: This is perhaps the most unbearably poignant film released so far this year. The Olsen twins, two ordinarily attractive, very modestly talented celebrity hyphenates, have reached the age of majority and the future does not look bright, writes Donald Clarke.

Even without knowing that one of them (Mary-Kate, I believe) has recently been treated for anorexia, the casual viewer of New York Minute could deduce that all is not well in the Olsen universe. When they peel back their eyelids to express surprise, delight or excitement, the huge, glassy spheres within seem to sweep everything else off the screen. There is nothing left of the poor little wretches but eyeball.

And what exactly are they for anymore? Being cheeky and looking incredibly like your sister are talents that have no real use in any adult industry aside from, well, the Adult Industry. In one enormously dubious scene in New York Minute (a film aimed at 14-year-olds, I would guess), Mary-Kate and Ashley find themselves wearing nothing but bathrobes in a stranger's hotel room. "Is this my birthday?" the oleaginous guest says when he stumbles across them. Laugh? I nearly phoned Child Services.

For the record, this hopeless film finds the Olsens playing, yes that's right, a pair of crazy twins set loose in Manhattan. One of them is a free-spirited rock drummer; the other is an uptight prude with aspirations to study at Oxford. Their voices constantly squeaking like a pair of poorly oiled gates in a hurricane, both desperately strive to get somewhere-or-other before something-or-other happens.

Did I really say Oxford? How will that city cope? Considering that both the relevant Olsen and her scholarship board seem to think that the ancient university is in London, Oxonians can, it seems, sleep easily in their beds.