Alice is on a losing streak: her flat, her job and her boyfriend. It has been the same since she was 14 and all her friends went on holidays and had flings with the local Adonises while their parents turned a blind eye. Alice's parents always managed to choose resorts where fellow holidaymakers only spoke German and/or had blue mohican haircuts. So Alice has this feeling of being constantly on the losing side of a happening existence.
Catching Alice is life after Clueless. Clare Naylor was probably penning it as the film's credits rolled: the timing is about right, and her narrator-cum-heroine is really just an English version of actress Alicia Silverstone, a little more grown up - but not a lot.
When an old schoolfriend lures the 20-something to Los Angeles and lands her a glamorous job as PR to the stars, it seems Alice's luck may be changing.
Soon, she has a wardrobe full of designer clothes, a kick-boxing class and - most necessary of all LA accessories - her own stalker, someone who sends her bad poetry, mangled flowers and a pathetic death threat.
Woven through this unlikely story for no very useful purpose is a parallel tale of her libidinous cousin Simon, aka Lord Icarus of Kirkheaton.
His wild adventures in South and Central America include getting drunk on a local spirit made from the saliva of a hallucinogenic Amazonian tree frog, falling in love with a pygmy, being pursued by bad guys and making nifty escapes from a posse of ex-girlfriends.
Alice, meanwhile, is pursued by a slick talent agent with a penchant for fur-lined handcuffs and menage a trois - or more if he can get them - and by Irishman Paddy, the irresistible theatre director who loves women - usually for about three weeks. Finally, of course, she falls in love with one of them.