Become a rock star......

Rating: 10/10 (21 December 2011)

London, England during five frantic weeks before Christmas follows a web-like pattern of inter-related, loosely related and unrelated stories of a dozen or more various individuals with their love lives, or lack of them.
The central character is the new bachelor prime minister David who cannot express his growing feelings for his new personal assistant Natalie.
The prime minister's older sister Karen slowly grows aware of her husband Harry's flirtation with an office worker named Mia. Karen's friend Daniel is a recently widowed writer whose 11-year-old son asks for love advice about a girl he has a crush on.
Meanwhile, Jamie is another writer who leaves his girlfriend after catching her cheating on him and travels to France to write a novel where he pursues a possible romance with his non-English speaking Portuguese maid Aurelia.
Other secondary characters involve a photographer who pursues his best friend's new wife Juliet; a pair of movie stand-ins, named John and Judy, who grow closer after their simulated love scenes; a libidinous chum who wants to travel to Wisconsin, USA to score with women; and a burned-out former rock star named Billy Mack who is the main connection between all stories involved...
It's a Christmas film directed by the man who made Hugh Grant a star, so what would you expect? To be honest, it's the most sickly sweet romantic movie you will ever wish to see, but the performances make this movie a must see, and not one story in this layered narrative is a weak point.
The opening is a little off putting, when Grant explains about phone calls during 9/11, but overlook this and you get such a rich character development, you cannot help but love the film.
There is no real plot to the film, and the connections with the characters really need to be taken with a large pinch of salt, but the film is consistently funny and sad, it's really one of those films that is really hard to dislike.
An essential Christmas movie.