GUY Pearce plays a gruff but lovestruck Harry Houdini in “Death Defying Acts,” a low-impact drama set in 1920s Scotland.

Houdini is on a world tour in which he promises $10,000 to anyone who can tell him what his departed mother’s last words were. That spells opportunity for a mother-daughter team of Edinburgh actresses (Catherine Zeta-Jones and Saoirse Ronan of “Atonement”) who have a cheesy stage show in which they play mystical spirit guides.

The ingredients are there for a cute con game, but instead the movie turns out to be a mushy melodrama in which the two adults jarringly alternate between being sharp-eyed tricksters and dewy romantics who slobber on each other in dreary love scenes.

Director Gillian Armstrong is more attentive to décor than the story, which never seems in a hurry to get anyplace in particular and concludes with a thud. Zeta-Jones, who does a nice Scottish accent, outshines Pearce, whose brash and bustling Houdini is supposed to be obsessed with his dead mother’s memory but seems more like a buffed car salesman.

Running time: 96 minutes. Rated PG (sexual situations). At the Sunshine, Houston Street, near First Avenue.

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