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If you're looking for a feel good movie to kick off the festive season then look no further than this big fluffy ball of tinsel showered candyfloss with a Christmas theme that rivals Love Actually for cheesiness. But thanks to a cast attacking their roles with gusto this piece of escapism has plenty of laughs to recommend it.

The na�ve Iris (Kate Winslet) could be Bridget Jones doppleganger � in love with a man about to marry another woman she can't put out the old flame and get with on her life. 6000 miles away in L.A. Amanda (Cameron Diaz) gets a harsh reality check when she finds that while she's been 'too busy with work' the man she lives with (Edward Burns) has been unfaithful. These two women find themselves facing the same singleton dilemma and - here's where the plot mechanics require you take a leap of faith � it just 'so happens' they're both signed up to the same home exchange holiday website and so impulsively agree that to get away from it all they'll switch homes for the holiday.

Welcome to 'lifeswap' as the homely journo Winslet ends up in La La Land while Diaz arrives in picture postcard little England trudging through the snow in high heels to a chocolate box cottage in a sleepy Surrey hamlet. It's not long before Iris' brother Graham (Jude Law) arrives in a suitably dishevelled drunken state and the films first romantic fumblings kick in to gear. Meanwhile across the Atlantic a jet lagged Iris still hung up on love rat Rufus Sewell is soon awoken from her navel gazing by the ball of energy that is Jack Black. Look out for a split second cameo from a bemused Dustin Hoffmann freaked out by Black singing the theme from The Graduate in a video store. Black hams it up big style and � as always � makes the price of a cinema ticket worthwhile. From this point the narrative plays out in a transatlantic switcheroo accurately summed up by director Nancy Meyers: "The best trips are the ones where you leave your baggage behind."

It's definitely a rom-com chick flick writ large while predictably the camera loves Law. Gazing longingly at his boyish smile, Meyers' direction panders to the pretty boy looks of an actor who seems to have cornered the market in loveable rogues and faux serious leads. It's the kind of film that if you're a guy you'll relent and take your girlfriend to see thinking that the brownie points are in the bag. But inevitably you'll find yourself sucked in because despite being overlong this story is well written with both Winslet and Diaz eager to play for laughs.  Iris sums up proceedings with the line, "I have found almost everything ever written about love to be true. Shakespeare said, 'Journeys end in lovers meeting.' What an extraordinary thought."

UK Premiere