The film received a British premiere in Leicester Square in London on 16 November 2003. There Curtis described his film as a "roaring rampage of romance" - a reference to the Quentin Tarantino movie Kill Bill released around the same time with the tagline a "roaring rampage of revenge". The film, released two weeks earlier in the United States, had received a mixed bag of reviews including a particularly poor review from A. O. Scott of the New York Times. Defending the film at the premiere, Curtis said "I'd rather make a film that most of the audience liked and some critics didn't rather than a film that critics loved and nobody wanted to watch."
The movie tells the tale of ten loosely related love stories set in London in the five weeks leading upto Christmas. The strands range from the fanciful - such as the nerdy Colin (played by Kris Marshall) heading to America to find love and immeditately meeting three beautiful girls in a Milwaukee bar and sleeping naked in the same bed as them that same evening - to the more serious tale of housewife and mother of two Karen (Emma Thompson) coping with near-infidelity of her husband (Rickman) in the throes of a midlife crisis. Grant plays the British Prime Minister who falls for his tea lady (Martine McCutcheon).Plot
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