Prurient British Romantic Codswallop - Avoid At All Costs

Rating: 3/10 (26 June 2005)

Over the course of a few weeks leading up until Christmas, various friends and relations fall in and out of love and examine their relationships.
This is what's generally known as a feelgood movie, but it had the opposite effect on me. It's not really about being in love, it's about the happy, giddy feeling of infatuation - it neglects to mention all the deeper emotions and complications which arise when you are in love with someone, and whenever it looks like it might start to get close to that (a grieving widower, a wife who suspects her husband has fallen in love with someone else), it makes sure it moves quickly onto something lighter. It's very badly written - vacuous and predictable, and somehow both unnecessarily vulgar and repellently sickly-sweet at the same time - which is a shame since its writer-director wrote some of the best British TV comedy of the eighties. Visually, it's tedious, and its soundtrack consists entirely of bland love songs. Its only asset is its huge cast, but since none of them have anything interesting to do or say they are mostly wasted. Big stars like Neeson, Rickman and Thornton are just plain slumming, Grant does his insufferable usual charming Lord Snot routine and most everyone else is just a Pretty Person. Only Linney and Thompson come close to drama and only Nighy (as an ageing Rod Stewart-type lothario rocker) says anything funny. If you want to see a real movie about love, made by grownups, watch any of the films of Ingmar Bergman, John Cassavetes or Nicolas Roeg, not this bland, superficial, ingratiating pap.