The latest from the makers of Four Weddings and a Funeral and an admirable attempt to produce some decent product for the Christmas period for a Mad Mad World.
In an attempt to reflect his aging fan base Hugh Grant gets to play the UK Prime Minister at the beginning of his term in office clearly reminiscent of the Halcyon days of New Labour government.
We join the new PM as he gets to grips with his new role and prepares for the visit of the President of the United States, In an obviously violation of the principles of cabinet government Grant's character completely ignores his cabinet colleagues and dictates policy, but this is the movies and as long as you can stick to the budget and the decency laws you can do anything you want but the only thing is the public get to vote more than once in five years.
But the plot switches and after 20 minutes we realise that we are following five or six parallel stories of variously mixed up thoroughly people searching for some salvation at Christmas. There was a token joke to keep the gay community happy but apart from that it was just pure escapeism which as we all know is the proven formula for putting bums on seats. Though they do risk a caning from the reviewers - the thing is to bite on something soft to distract attention away from the pain.
So running through the characters we have an eccentric writer who escapes to Provence, a couple of "body doubles" (my favourite), a geek who leaves the country because he is having no luck with the opposite sex and as it's the movies and Christmas he get what he wants, a washed up rock star, a civil servant from Wandsworth, an Anglo-Irish one parent family and many others who don't get a mention. Oh a great cameo by Rowan Atkinson by the way.
As usual the shots of London put the city in much better light than we do on the site and this time the area features is the South Bank around Tate Modern with views over the Millennium Bridge to both old and new City landmarks.
Oh the single "Love is All Around" gets a reprise though the washed up star did it better than Marty Pellow well at least the one that made it into the charts though the one in Four Weddings and a Funeral didn't have him over improvising the way he used to do.
I'm not what to make of it - definitely designed to generate that elusive feel good factor and somehow they got away with it even in Holland where it has been raining constantly for three weeks with the odd day of winter sunshine but perhaps one day someone will make a film of this modern era - it's so new they haven't given it a name yet like the 60's or 80's. And no we haven't hatched a deal over Sushi and Saké and teamed up with anyone to offer a prize for the one who can come up with the best name so please don't jam our inbox.