A featherweight English comedy (the only American
actress in a significant role is Laura Linney, of The West Wing fame), about a
few people who come in and out of each other's life in the days before
Christmas, which are known to be the ideal time for love. The new Prime Minister
falls in love with his assistant, and has a sister who is friendly with a newly
widowed man and his son who are trying to fix each other's love life, the sister
is married to a producer who's in love with his assistant and tries to fix the
American girl with another assistant who pays her no attention (or at least so
we think), the assistant has an exhibition at a Wedding Photographer's gallery,
the bride (a white woman married to a black man) hits on him and think he hates
her when in fact he has a crush on her, the writer has an affair with his
Portuguese maid, and they understand each other perfectly without knowing a
single word in each other's language (in my opinion, this was the most beautiful
romance in the Movie, only too bad the screenwriter had to send him to learn
Portuguese and her to learn English, it just ruined everything), a caricature of
an aging rock star who in spite of all his commercial success, can find true
love only in the person of his plump manager (one of the "The Full Monty" gang),
and so forth, and they all meet in the end at the Christmas show at the school
their children go to.
The problem is that because of their overwhelming
desire to be nice, all the characters supposedly say bitter or cool so called
truths, or try shock their surroundings with a supposedly outrageous behavior
that is contrary to expectations (the couple in the pornographic Movie just
wants to talk, the mixed wedding, the meeting between the Prime Minister and the
U.S. president who is described as a not-so-nice guy), but they never go all the
way and therefore the outrage is never real. The switch from character to
character is too fast, and note that most of the characters are not called by
their names (at least not last names).
By the way, have you noticed that in this Movie, everyone find loves except for
the American girl? Perhaps more than by using the character of the President,
this is the writer's way of expressing his opinion about the Americans. A fun
guest appearance by Rowan Atkinson ("Mr. Bean").