Nice enough if you can suspend disbelief

Rating: 6/10 (14 December 2006)

This was your average heartwarming Christmas rom com, written by an American, mostly set in a ridiculously unrealistic England, where it never snows in Surrey over Christmas (trust me, I live there) and no small ads writer for The Telegraph could afford a chocolate box cottage in Surrey, let alone a brand new mini...and two girls under six both have their own mobile phones, but, if you can push all of that to the back of your mind, you'll enjoy this well enough.
Kate Winslet and Jack Black actually surprised me by working as a couple. That was my main stumbling block before I saw the movie, but I was pleasantly surprised by their convincing chemistry. Jude Law played his charming, womanising self, as usual, but this time he managed to do it with a heart, especially in his scenes with his adorable daughters. And, the relationship between Kate's character and the man playing Arthur was wonderful; their friendship provided the most heartwarming moments in the whole film, which is rather ironic, seeing as theirs was the only non romantic coupling.
The main parts that let the film down, however, were Cameron Diaz's painful, embarrassing over acting (the first scene, especially, is cringe-worthy) and making Jude Law's character a widower. A widower who never mentions his wife? Who doesn't mind playing the field even though his wife hasn't even been dead for two years? No pictures of his wife in his house? I felt making him a widower was completely unnecessary, because the plot didn't do anything with it; there could have been some genuinely moving scenes if that aspect of Jude Law's character had been explored, but it was glossed over, and that hit a bum note with me. He may as well just have been divorced.
This film is a nice, gentle, Christmassy film that will entertain you well enough and, if you're like me, make you shed a few tears despite the predictability. We all know they're going to get together in the end, that's no surprise. But, pathetic woman as I am, it still gets me every time. If only Cameron Diaz's role had been played by a more competent actress, then this film would probably have been a lot better. I wouldn't watch it again, but for a pleasant diversion on a weekday night, it served its purpose.