With a dreamy, festive setting and underlying message of love to all men and women - especially if they're single and unspeakably attractive - The Holiday is a corny comedy that will appeal to hopeless romantics.

In sunny California we meet Amanda (Cameron Diaz), who creates movie trailers and is fed up with her cheating boyfriend Ethan (Edward Burns). Across the Atlantic in snow-laden London, Iris (Kate Winslet), who writes the wedding column for The Daily Telegraph, is in a similar position with roguish beau Jasper (Rufus Sewell). Desperate for a break from their respective heartaches, the two women agree a temporary house-swap for Christmas.

Amanda and Iris are delighted to escape from their old lives, only to find that love is quite literally on their new doorsteps: for the American visitor, it's Iris's brother Graham (Jude Law), and for the Brit abroad, a film composer called Miles (Jack Black). The two couples get on swimmingly but their happiness is threatened by Amanda and Iris's inevitable return to their old lives.

Meyers's film is completely divorced from reality. Iris's newspaper job must be extremely well paid for her to afford the picture postcard Rose Hill Cottage, nestled in the one nook of the English countryside with a perpetual dusting of snow. Amanda is obviously doing very nicely too, with her sprawling LA mansion, although it must only have one bedroom - how else do you account for Ethan sleeping on the sofa rather than in a guest room when he is banished from the bedroom by his enraged other half?

Graham is so unfathomably perfect - good looking, charming, sensitive, in touch with his emotions, available - that it's laughable. A case of wish fulfilment on the writer-director's part.

The script is sprinkled with some smart, acerbic one-liners, as when Graham declares, "Long distance relationships can work, you know?" and Amanda responds, "Really? I can't make one work when I live in the same house as someone."

Amanda's storyline begins badly - the character comes across as whiny and irritating - but improves considerably, dominating the second half of the film. Diaz generates a pleasing screen chemistry with Law, the latter adopting an array of adoring and flirtatious stares for the camera.

In contrast, Iris's journey of self-discovery, which bears an uncanny similarity to Bridget Jones's Diary - insecure media heroine prone to bouts of self-pity and tears, caddish love interest who breaks her heart - becomes less interesting as the film progresses.

The romance with Ethan develops too late in the film to be satisfying, ensuring narrative symmetry with Amanda and Graham's relationship and setting up a saccharine, festive finale that will leave audiences feeling either warm and fuzzy, or slightly nauseous.

Described rather aptly as The March of the Penguins meets Riverdance, Happy Feet is a feelgood, computer-animated musical comedy about a misfit's quest to find his place in a world that doesn't understand him. Director George Miller traversed similar territory in the Oscar-nominated Babe, although the setting here is the vast, icy wastes of Antarctica, where emperor penguins battle against Mother Nature to propagate the species.

The animators create some truly stunning visuals. Epic scenes of the flightless birds battling against the elements, the freezing 100mph catabatic winds forcing them to huddle together for warmth, take the breath away. Equally impressive are the Busby Berkeley inspired song and dance numbers, including the centrepiece sequence to the toe-tapping Boogie Wonderland which is a triumph of choreography and swooping camera movements.

The unlikely hero of the tale is a young emperor penguin called Mumble (voiced by Elijah Wood), who is an outcast in his community. Unlike the other birds, Mumble sings and dances to his own tune, a quirk which frustrates his father Memphis (Hugh Jackman) and is seen as cute and adorable by his mother Norma Jean (Nicole Kidman). "I just wouldn't do that around folks, son," Memphis tells his son, hoping to stop Mumble's incessant jiggling.

"Why not?" asks his boy. "It just ain't penguin," replies his father sternly.

In desperation, Memphis and Norma Jean take Mumble for singing lessons with grand dame Mrs Astrakhan (Miriam Margolyes), to no avail. Fellow teacher Miss Viola sums up the gravity of the situation: "A penguin without a heart song is hardly a penguin at all." Unperturbed, Mumble embarks on a voyage of self-discovery, unleashing his musical soul and revealing affections for pretty childhood friend Gloria (Brittany Murphy). En route, Mumble meets a band of outcast penguins called the Adelie Amigos, led by the party-loving Ramon (Williams), who teaches Mumble to be true to himself and embrace his individuality, rather than waddle away from it.

Happy Feet warms the cockles of your heart with its predictable though extremely enjoyable rites of passage story, interspersed with some funky musical interludes.

Vocal performances are strong - Kidman is a breathless honey and Jackman affects his best Elvis Presley impersonation - with Williams invariably stealing the limelight.

As well as playing the hyperactive Ramon, Williams also channels the spirit of Barry White as the rockhopper penguin Lovelace The Guru, who tells his groupies: "Ladies, please avert your eyes, hypnotise'cos I've been known to hypnotize."

The ecological moralising of the final 20 minutes is a tad heavy handed and the film lacks a spectacular finale but Mumble and his chums are cute as can be.

When Memphis begs his son to "stop this freakiness with your feet" and Mumble replies, "don't ask me to change, pa, because I can't," we're with him every tap and shuffle of the way.