This is as carefully contrived as potential hits come. US film star (Julia Roberts, practically playing herself) meets London bookshop owner (Hugh Grant as... well, Hugh Grant) and wham! Instant karma. Quite effective in its mass appeal, the movie's also totally synthetic, as it strings out its familiar boy-meets-gets-loses-gets girl situations towards innumerable semi-climaxes. Unlikely situations abound - Grant's character would never have a flatmate, let alone one as scruffy as Rhys Ifans - together with implausibilities and hard-to-believe gaps in people's knowledge. There are some funny lines in Richard Curtis's script, but they don't quite go to make a film, and we get far too many caressing close-ups of the stars' teeth. The result is like a puppy begging to be loved; every time you pick it up it pees all over you.