Love Actually review

After writing some of the biggest comedy smashes of the last ten years - Four Weddings and a Funeral, Bean, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones' Diary - Richard Curtis is currently king of the castle when it comes to the romantic comedy screenplay. You know you are going to get gags of the highest order from the man who co-wrote four series of Blackadder, and now he has gone one step further, taking directorial duties for the first time. The result is an inevitable worldwide smash hit.

An ensemble comedy on the theme of love in all its variations, this London-set film deals with numerous different interlinked relationships. Hugh Grant plays a new Prime Minister who falls in love with the Number 10 teagirl (an impressive and natural big screen debut from Martine McCutcheon). His sister Emma Thompson worries whether her successful husband (Alan Rickman) is having an affair with his secretary. Meanwhile in Rickman's office, Laura Linney yearns for the love of the chief designer. Colin Firth decamps to France when he finds his wife is cheating on him with his brother, and finds love - despite a language barrier - with his Portuguese housemaid (Lucia Moniz). Liam Neeson struggles to help himself and his son over the death of his wife. Keira Knightley, Andrew Lincoln, Rowan Atkinson and Billy Bob Thornton round out a star-studded cast.

All of them are overshadowed however by a hilarious turn by Bill Nighy as a faded rocker desperate to have a Christmas Number One. In many ways, his relationship with his manager (sensitively played by Gregor Fisher) is the glue the bonds the film together, and is both laugh-out-loud funny and eventually quite touching.

The set-up, which consumes the first hour of the film, is neat, sharply-paced and more often than not very very funny. But then Curtis arrives at a problem: no sooner has he outlined each character's situation than he has to think about resolving it. Thus, the second part of the film (notably much less funnier) feels forced, and at times unconvincing.

There is also a feeling that much of the material is simply regurgitating scenes from previous Working Title/Hugh Grant collaborations: Love is all Around from Four Weddings is overplayed; a zany Rhys Ifans character from Notting Hill pops up here and there, and once again the film ends with Grant making a fool of himself on stage in a school (About A Boy). And it's time to declare a moratorium on scenes where solitary characters break into dance - funny for the first ten times in The Full Monty, but actually a bit embarrassing here.

Nevertheless, there is plenty of festive cheer in what is essentially good-natured nonsense, and the film has a positive message much needed in these gloomy times. The box office will ring, the soundtrack will sell and the audience will get more than their value for money and leave with grins on their faces.