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 (Ed 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.

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.

The two couples get on swimmingly but their happiness is threatened by Amanda and Iris' inevitable return to their old lives.

Meyers's film is completely divorced from reality. Iris's job on The Daily Telegraph must be extremely well paid for her to afford the picture postcard Rose Hill Cottage, nestled in 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.

But the script is sprinkled with some smart, acerbic one-liners, like 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."