The scene is played entirely without irony, begging comparison with a near-identical moment in the excellent Six Degrees of Separation where a house guest purporting to be the son of Sidney Poitier is grilled by his anecdote-hungry hosts. That film explored the chasm between the lives we lead and the lives we yearn to lead, but no such disparity could be accommodated in a Richard Curtis script because it doesn't exist in his world.Hugh Grant recently explained that Curtis has "this very rare thing of actually quite liking life." Isn't there a word missing from that sentence? It seems rather that Curtis actually quite likes his life You can't blame him. He has obviously proved the man innocent, but he's still found guilty. Its Christmas setting, guaranteed to ensure longevity in the form of seasonal television screenings for decades to come, is only the most obvious example.

When Jarvis Cocker wrote "Disco 2000", he had the decency to confess that his inspiration came from contemplating the hefty royalties Prince would pocket - come the end of the decade - from the song "1999". In that sense, Love Actually will be the gift that keeps on giving, to the Curtis family if no one else.But what did we expect? If there is a single scene which encapsulates this man's facile oeuvre, it's the dinner party in Notting Hill. But as the basis for a movie career it leaves something to be desired.'Love Actually' goes on release on November 21. Good: To Kill A Mockingbird Robert Mulligan, 1962 Good: To Kill A Mockingbird Robert Mulligan, 1962 Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) is defending a black man accused of rape in a small, Southern town. In it, a group of troubled-but-happy Londoners quiz the Hollywood star Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) on her salary and her lifestyle. Everybody wins - the audience is soothed by familiar performers, the celebrities are flattered that their popularity has been further ratified by this promotion to the cinema screen, and the film-makers can be certain that these double-agents will use their media outlets to endorse the movie.But then the movie, like all Curtis's work since The Tall Guy, is nothing if not calculated.

Curtis may not be anywhere near the peak of his powers, but he knows all the angles. Even as it's draped in the Stars and Stripes, the film emphatically waves its Union Jack. The picture is rigged to appeal to British audiences, especially those who never venture into the cinema. Curtis has cast some of the smaller roles from British television, and with each recognisable face that appears - Martine McCutcheon, Andrew Lincoln (Teachers), the pop-eyed Kris Marshall (My Family), the doughy Martin Freeman (The Office) - you experience the same slump that you get when a promising actor turns out to be mixed up in a sex scandal, or involved with the Church of Scientology: There goes another one.Those actors will be balm for some viewers, as will the proliferation of cameos by TV celebrities such as Ant and Dec, Jo Whiley and Michael Parkinson, whose vocal acclaim the film has cleverly bought. But then Curtis is lucky enough not to need to choose anymore: he has flogged his brand of Britishness across the world, no matter that it is as artificial as the images of pink-haired punk rockers on sale to tourists in Trafalgar Square.Curtis says he'd like to make a movie that addresses a social issue (he's a fan of Lukas Moodysson's Lilya 4-Ever - about the child sex trade).

But don't hold your breath; if Love Actually is anything to go by, he's feeling more business-like than ever. A British actor in the romantic comedy genre will always look like the little guy when placed in the same frame as an American counterpart. The day that Curtis risks pitting his alter ego against someone of equal status could be the day he starts developing as a dramatist.These films feel shallow because the most convincing love story on display is the one between the writer and his potential marketplace. This stopped being a case of big fish/small pond syndrome a long time ago. In Britain, Curtis is more like a whale languishing in a puddle.

A film adapted from the doodles on his telephone pad would make it into the top ten hits of the year, so it can't be surprising that his attention seems focused more than ever on America But he has no need to "crack" the States: he's done that. A Hollywood agent recently admitted, "It's hard to bet against Richard Curtis." Each of the last four films he has worked on, including Bridget Jones's Diary, which he co-wrote, has grossed over £100 million, with Bean and Notting Hill passing £200 million.So what exactly does Richard Curtis want? In one way he's the walking fulfilment of Alan Parker's depressing announcement that British film-makers should reject the parochial in favour of the transatlantic. That's the function of actresses like Andie MacDowell and Julia Roberts, but it also applies to the Prime Minister (Hugh Grant) who looks like a little-boy-lost next to the sinister president (Billy Bob Thornton) in Love Actually, or the hero of Notting Hill (Grant again) who is mistaken for a lowly porter by a boorish movie star (Alec Baldwin). His dithering British heroes are invariably defined by the presence of the Americans around them. But what Curtis's films fatally lack is the conflict of the most robust romantic comedies.