As the film begins, has-been middle-aged rock star Bill Nighy is making a bad Christmas record arranged by his dumpy long-term manager Gregor Fisher. Due to shameless promotion and because it is a feel-good movie, the bad record becomes a hit, and plays on the tellies and radios of the other characters throughout the movie.
The many other subplots feature romances. Author Colin Firth finds out his girlfriend is shagging his brother. He moves out and hires an attractive housekeeper Lúcia Moniz. They share several moments despite the fact she is Portuguese and doesn't speak English. She returns to Portugal. Later, because it is a feel-good movie, Firth learns Portuguese, journeys to Portugal, tracks her down, proposes to her, and she accepts and leaves her family to move to England for this significantly older person she hardly knows.
Alan Rickman manages an office of some kind that employs Heike Makatsch as his hottie, younger, and forward secretary. Also there is pretty but sad sack Laura Linney and her hottie crush Rodrigo Santoro. Rickman tries to play cupid and pair Linney and Santoro. The plan succeeds and they almost shag, but Linney's mentally disturbed brother Michael Fitzgerald keeps ringing Linney's cell, and Santoro becomes exasperated and leaves. Awww.
Meanwhile, Rickman buys jewelry for the willing Makatsch, but Rickman's wife Emma Thompson is too clever and finds out. The marriage is saved, and they attend the school holiday play that includes their two perfectly adorable young daughters.
Because it is a movie, Thompson's brother Hugh Grant has just been elected Prime Minister. Amazingly, he is single and unattached, but immediately develops the hots for unabashed and ebullient Martine McCutcheon. Grant is upset when rascally U.S. President Billy Bob Thornton does some tongue thing in her ear, but later decides he wants her anyway, and wins her, because, after all, he's the Prime Minister, and she loves him too.
There's also Martin Freeman and Joanna Page as porn film stand-ins who begin a shy but straightforward friendship/romance, which progresses nicely because it is a movie that culminates in many happy endings.
Yet another subplot has newly widowed Liam Neeson seeking diversion from his gloom by involving himself in the crush of his preteen stepson Thomas Brodie-Sangster. The stepson is obsessed with hottie preteen Olivia Olson, and absolutely must see her off at the airport before she leaves the country even though she hardly knows who he is. Because it is a movie, he manages to do this, and his father runs into Claudia Schiffer, who like many women in this film is delighted by the first middle-aged Englishman she encounters.
We can't omit Keira Knightley, who marries token black man Chiwetal Ejiofor. Ejiofor's best friend is Andrew Lincoln, who pines for Knightley because she is really hot and smiles all the time. Knightley learns about Lincoln's crush and decides it would be fun to humor it and keep it a secret from Ejiofor, since he has only about three lines anyway.
Last and perhaps least is Kris Marshall, a stupid young man who has this notion that every bar in America is stocked with models waiting for any Englishman to walk through the front door. Because it is a movie, this fantasy comes true, and the complete absurdity that follows becomes the only part of the film actually worth seeing. Marshall's friend is Abdul Salis, the movie's other token black man.
Rowan Atkinson has a bit role as a Bean-like character who unintentionally nearly foils Rickman's purchase of a pricey bauble for his would-be office infidelity.
How others will see it. This oppressively feel-good film made a mint at the box office. It drew mostly favorable reviews. BAFTA named Bill Nighy Best Supporting Actor, and nominated Emma Thompson as Best Supporting Actress for her star turn over what to do with her presumably cheating husband. At the Golden Globes, the movie was nominated for both Best Picture and Best Screenplay, but at least the Oscars was able to ignore it.
Today at imdb.com, the film has a whopping 225K user votes. The user votes are also very high despite a modest gender spread. Men give it 7.5 and women award it 8.0 with little variation across viewer ages.
Most viewers are charmed by the avalanche of feel-good happy endings that culminate in closing scenes that unite most of the cast. There are, however, holdout Scrooges, such as yours truly, who find the experience nauseating.
How I felt about it. Where to begin. Shortly after the funeral for Thomas Brodie-Sangster's mother, his stepdad, the widower, tries to console the tyke. But Brodie-Sangster isn't upset that he has lost his mother. He's depressed because he has a crush on some girl singer at school who at best is a casual acquaintance.
Instead of actually having conversations with this girl, Brodie-Sangster decides he can win her by becoming a drummer. And indeed, his father apparently buys him a drum kit, and within a week (?) he is so proficient that he has joined her school band and even manages to perform with her on stage. But he still hasn't spoken to her.
Yet he knows that she is leaving England for some foreign land, and somehow even knows the exact time of her departure. He then must see her off at the airport, even if it means committing felonies bypassing layers of post-911 security. But he's 12 years old. Can't he just suffer through a crush from afar like every other preteenager on the planet?
It's little use to complain that the Prime Minister of England shouldn't jeopardize the nation's relationship with the United States over the President's momentary flirtation with some nobody secretary that the Prime Minister secretly wishes to bang.