Only Richard Curtis could have made this film.

Rating: 3/10 (31 August 2012)

Too many characters and stories and neither a natural nor a contrived but clever connection between them. Too many stories meaning there wasn't "a" story and no time for characters to develop. It looks like Curtis has used all his failed plot ideas - the ones he couldn't make a full movie out of - and fitted them in this. And some of them are truly dire.
Only Richard Curtis could have made this film - I imagine if anyone else wrote the same it would never pass a read. Its not really a film so much as one huge number of shorts intertwined.
The film begins with the same kind of voice-over that we saw in "Notting Hill". "That again" or "them again" is the main feeling I have with this film. It ends with the old character-in-a-race-to-catch-their-loved-one before they leave/to deliver a message - in not one but several of the stories. A tirade of swears is meant to be comedy. etc etc. Curtis uses all the old "tricks" we've already seen.
There was one story thread which I would have liked to see as the whole movie - the writer and the maid. Going into the water to look for the blown papers was about the only place in the film I laughed. Thus I've given it a 3 - without it, it would have been a 1 from me.