Ashton Kutcher vs. Josh Hartnett
Battle of the '70s-Flavoured Dimbulb Love Hunks

After Ashton Kutcher was famously plucked from the floor of a General Mills plant in Iowa and shotputted into a career as, first, a model, and then as an actor, life must have seemed exceedingly rosy. He was pretty. He was playing a popular character (Kelso) on an increasingly popular sitcom (That 70s Show). And with the over-abundance of teen-oriented entertainment, a jump to movies seemed inevitable. His chin-length shag, his milk-fed good looks, his twinkly eyes, and his "but, dude!" comic demeanour quickly established him as Hollywood's favourite '70s-Flavoured Dimbulb Love Hunk -- a title he could rightly have assumed he'd have all to himself for quite some time.

But then along came Josh Hartnett as Trip Fontaine in The Virgin Suicides. Chin-length shag? Check. Milk-fed good looks? You betcha. Twinkly eyes? Present. "But, dude!" comic demeanour? President. Suddenly, there were two '70s-Flavoured Dimbulb Love Hunks walking the paved-with-gold streets of Tinseltown. Which, we're guessing, is one too many.

Who will prevail? It's a tough one to call. Kutcher has the advantage of weekly exposure on his sitcom. And he's definitely pretty. On the other hand, his turn in Dude, Where's My Car? didn't exactly establish him as someone with great wheatfields of emotional range, or help him expand beyond his current fan base of lovestruck teen girls and snickering teen boys.

Hartnett, on the other hand, was late out of the gate but may now have the inside track, given his starring role in the upcoming Pearl Harbour, a film that's already established itself as 2001's Impossible-To-Ignore, We-Will-Stuff-This-Down-Your-Throat Blockbuster of the Summer. Plus, Hartnett will be prancing around for two-plus hours with short, military-style hair, which alone should go a long way towards helping him break out of this tightly entangled pack of two.

Advantage: Hartnett, by a (short) hair