Cockle Warming

Rating: 7/10 (4 December 2003)

In a festive season with a severe shortage of good old crimbo movies Richard Curtis' directorial debut is more than welcome. It's Short Cuts meets Capra for the Cosmo generation and there's nothing wrong with that. (Warning! The previous sentence is only 75% as accurate and 35% as clever as it thinks it is). That-genius-behind-Blackadder even lets some darkness creep in around the edges of the fairytale tableau and the film is all the better for it. Funny, touching and more than a little bit cockle warming.