The Love Punch

The cast is bespoke, the venue sentimental, the story fashionably light. What could possibly go wrong?

Everything.

Emma Thompson and Pierce Brosnan make the perfect rom-com duo - attractive, easy with comedy, charming. Here they play Kate and Richard, a divorced couple on the cusp of muddled age where a prostrate scare, a bad back and painful bunions are part of decrepitude's sly advance.

They team up together again after Richard's business has been taken over by an international asset stripper, leaving them and a bunch of loyal employees bereft of shares, now worthless, and facing the fury of a recently raided pension fund.

They want revenge. Actually, they want their money back. And they read in the papers that their nemesis, the thirtysomething smooth as silk business assassin, has given his fiancee a world famous diamond, worth millions.

Plan A: go to Paris and steal the jewel. Take Kate's suburban neighbours, Jerry (Timothy Spall) and Penelope (Celia Imrie), as comic relief.

Plan B (not on the schedule): rekindle their romance.

"You're much more likable these days."

"I haven't had sex for two years."

You wish, you pine, you ache for Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn to show them how this is done. Instead, director Joel Hopkins' script lies dead on the carpet, killing any hope that Thompson and Brosnan's chemistry might raise the temperature, or give the heist a scintilla of tension.

The film has a cozy Middle English vibe that feels terribly safe and jolly hockey whatnots. For those who don't take sugar in their tea and prefer lemon tart to chocolate meringue The Love Punch might permanently damage their belief in a Brit flick renaissance.