Love is all around in 'Love Actually'

Love Actually

Director: Richard Curtis

Cast: Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Liam Neeson, Alan Rickman, Bill Nighy, Colin Firth, Laura Linney, Martine McCutcheon, Keira Knightly, Andrew Lincoln, Rowan Atkinson, Billy Bob Thornton

Cert: 15.

Having single-handedly kept the British film industry going in recent years by writing Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones's Diary, Curtis steps behind the camera for the first time to bring us this fluffy, star-packed ensemeble piece on the general theme of romance, finding and losing it.

As with all ensemble pieces - we have some 20 stars in 10 stories which, somehow and not always successfully, come together at the end - it's a bit of a curate's egg.

But it's light and satisfying and most of the characters gain our sympathy from the outset.

The problem is that Curtis always seems to write the same script over and over, and here he not only nicks scenes from other films he even manages to nick scenes from his own previous works. But he still manages to get away with it.

The main plotline brings us Grant, as stumblingly foppish as ever, as the Prime Minister who falls in love with his unlikely - and rough-tongued - tea-lady (McCutcheon). Around this we have a wonderfully OTT performance, a real scene-stealer, from Nighy, as a boozed-up former rock star making a spectacular comeback with a ghastly Yuletide song (the story is set in the run-up to Christmas); an often moving performance from Neeson, as a widower with a young son (who has his own romantic problems); Thompson, as a wife who thinks her husband (Rickman) is having an affair with his office floozie; Firth as a writer who falls in love with his Portuguese cleaner; Linney as a secretary who hankers for a colleague; Lincoln as a man deeply in love with his best friend's wife and Thornton, in a terrific cameo role, as an awful US President.

There is much to enjoy about this undemanding film - we could, though, have lost at least two of the stories - and at least Curtis is doing his best to give the British actors regular work, and the audiences regular doses of romance.

Star Rating: 4/5