Is it possible for a film to be so smug that you can actually choke on it?

Rating: 5/10 (6 March 2004)

Because I found myself gagging at this cavalcade of middle class self-satisfied dross and needed the sick bag when I saw Emma Thompson on the screen. Add to this a cameo role for Rowan Atkinson and we're in business.
Yes, it's the return of Richard Curtis. You remember him, surely? He was the one who made us all laugh with his film about posh people who said "f***" a lot. Then there was his follow-up film about posh people who said "f***" a lot. Not forgetting the one about posh people who said "f***" a lot. Well, he's back, still not presenting us with anything approaching a genuine human emotion and yes, posh people do indeed say "f***" a lot. Well, to be fair, only a bit this time around.
Because Curtis has at least branched out, making this the most watchable of his luvvied-up monstrosities by presenting us with a series of vignettes. Naturally, we get Hugh Grant and his "I'm posh, whoops, I've said f***, and here's a dead pan take to a blatantly obvious social juxtaposition" shenanigans. To be honest, I do quite like Hugh despite myself, so he doesn't produce the biggest allergic reaction. Neither does Thompson, who gets the most depth, and the story that doesn't have a happy ending. Probably the biggest non-starter is the sweet rendition of All You Need Is Love which then unfolds into a full brass band playing in the church. Well, imagine that! A full brass band! In a church of all places! How I laughed.
Some have actually criticised Curtis for not splicing his vignettes together successfully enough, like they're watching Robert Altman or even Kurosawa. For God's sake, it's just some tatty comedy for posh people who don't get out much, it's not supposed to be art. Yet while I give the writer/director some slack there, it must be said that not all of his pieces actually go anywhere. Particularly of note is the one with the talented Kris Marshall, who dreams of going to America where he believes all US girls will want to sleep with him because of his accent. So he goes there and... four US girls sleep with him because of his accent. And the punchline is...?
Despite coming out of the noxious All You Need Is Love scene, Keira Knightley and Andrew Lincoln do come off better than most, Lincoln because he gets to, like Thompson, show something beneath the self-amused surface, and Knightley, well, just because I would. Big time. Other highlights include two pairs of bare breasts, Bill Nighy in parts, two pairs of bare breasts, some gratuitous cameos, two pairs of bare breasts, an okayish yarn for Colin Firth and two pairs of bare breasts.
But this is the wacky, zany world of Richard Curtis, a land where everyone is a great British eccentric, and even the sole working class character (Martine McCutcheon) and her family are just offbeat and loveable. It opens by allying itself with the events of September 11th, an event nicely re-alluded to at the end by a so-so scene that shows lax airport security. This is a world where everyone talks, hugs and can find true love... just as long as they're straight, able-bodied, middle class and good-looking.

You do have to question in what reality the Prime Minister's nephews and nieces would go to the same school as the kids from the roughest end of town, though thankfully with Nighy's "Christmas Is All Around" life didn't imitate non-art. On the one hand fairly amusing, on the other a smug self-reflexive reference to his own Four Weddings and a Funeral, the real record-buying public saw the film's No.1 Christmas single barely trouble the top thirty. It's a small phyrric victory in a war of bland.