Did My Best to Hate It, Failed.....

Rating: Null/10 (23 December 2003)

So I'd had this God-awful row with my girlfriend, and I really wanted to see Dead End but had promised to take her to this...I sat in the cinema desperately leaning away from her to let her know I was still angry. Then Hugh Grant makes that SICKENING speech about the 9/11 victims. Mood blackening. Bill Nighy and the hilarious wasted rocker strand cheers me slightly, but the scene in the church where the WACKY best man/stalker arranges for a band of Chicago proportions AND a full choir unexpectedly to sing "All You Need is Love" - well, for the first time since Interview With The Vampire, I was ready to walk out. Liam Neeson's brat didn't help - don't you HATE kids spouting adult dialogue? Memo to screenwriters: kids communicate in surly, monosyllabic grunts, not flowing streams of bons mots!!
Slowly, inevitably, I warmed to it. There were more sick-making moments, and Curtis' habit of placing coffins in his stories to shock us, only to juxtapose something bathetic...in this case the Bay City Rollers...is cheap. But, like most of the other contributors here, I left the cinema feeling happy (though still refusing to speak to my girlfriend).
One really annoying point was the Prime Minister's decision to go all anti-American on our asses because of jealousy over a woman! (And a woman, at that, who, ridiculously, says "Oh, piss it!" - in fact, is there an award for least-convincing swearing in a movie? Martine McCutcheon is a shoo-in). We don't see the CONSEQUENCES of his tub-thumping speech - only the tearful reactions of his staff (mainly the soppy women, of course). I don't think the US would be quite so cowed in real life.
Plus points: the porn stand-ins strand (funny in an uptight British way), the wish-fulfillment of the hitherto ANNOYING berk who goes to the states (you keep waiting for him to wake from his dream), Rowan Atkinson, the Emma Thompson strand (never warmed to her before, but, with the help of Joni, she provides an adult heart to this movie)...and Bill Nighy. The aging-rocker thing has been done to death, but this strand provides belly-laughs - what a pity the US audience won't appreciate his "Ant or Dec" line (as, fortunately those two no-marks are unknown across the pond). I actually had to stop myself laughing, lest my girlfriend think I was thawing.
So, serious flaws but, despite them, and despite yourself, you'll enjoy it.