The Most Overrated Underrated Movie

Rating: 3/10 (8 December 2014)

The most famous example of the, thankfully, very narrow subgenre of holiday themed movies that feature maximal celebrity cameos and minimal story organized around a major holiday. Christmas, rather than "New Year's Eve" or "Valentines Day" gets the treatment this time with but despite the presence of an excellent British cast (Hugh Grant, Kiera Knightly, Emma Thomson, etc) the result is the same as equivalent American holiday outings. To put it succinctly there's no "there" there. The film contains a pastiche of boring little love stories with obvious endings in largely unrealistic scenarios. Particularly Hugh Grant playing a single heterosexual man who ascends to the highest level of office comes across as completely unelectable in real life. Hugh's standard performance as the good-looking absent-minded middle class everyman had grown stale by this go-around and even he seemed bored. The talents of powerhouse actors such as Knightley and Thomson put to no good use seems a shame. If only they had some decent lines to say. Martin Freeman and Joanna Page as porn actors who fall in love starts off as clever but quickly becomes repetitive. Everyone else just seems bored. Having said that blaming the folks involved somewhat does them a disservice as this type of quick-cut vignette film can amount to only so much given the necessary shallows it plays in given the number of subplots that the director tries to cram in. In short, ignore the advice of reviewers who talk about this trifle being unfairly underrated - the underraters have it right.