Repugnant Manipulative Saccharine Rubbish!

Rating: 1/10 (27 March 2004)

It's films like this that makes you despise what cinema has become - a manipulative medium that contrives a formula to tap into your base emotions with a painting-by-numbers banality. Richard Curtis uses every clichéd, over-used, underdefined character from his big book of cardboard caricatures, then gets all his tired old thesp-chums to appear in it and churn out this sugar-sweet isn't-the-world-wonderful-even-when-you-think-it-isn't rubbish - and then has the audacity to stick it in the cinemas of the world and charge an entrance fee. How long must we tolerate this self-indulgent travesty from a man who is the king of the dumbing-down rom-com.
Notting Hill and Love Actually should forever be consigned to video bargain bucket hell.