An off-form Steve Martin stars as the manager of a struggling telephone helpline that's about to be disconnected, in this California-set adaptation of French comedy Père Noël Est une Ordure. It's so tasteless you'd scarcely believe it's by Nora Ephron, director of that eminently inoffensive romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle. There's also little to warm the heart in the bleak Christmas context. Good Samaritans have rarely been so desolately portrayed.

The events of a crisis hotline business on one crazy night during the Christmas holidays.