Emma Thompson has got to be one of the most likable people on the planet. Putting aside her acting prowess, she just comes off as incredibly nice and even manages to ooze a sense of the British upper class without turning into Mrs. Dalloway. In heaven, I get to have tea with her and nibble on her freshly baked scones.

Until then, I will content myself with "The Love Punch," in which Ms. Thompson says — in that common-sense way of hers — "Love is easy to fall into; it's liking that's much harder." Surely she's got no worries about being liked, and her character Kate is an eminently wonderful woman who lectures at a university and has remained friends with her ex-husband, Richard (Pierce Brosnan).

But Richard becomes more than that when he drops by her house to inform her that their entire savings have gone up in smoke, or rather, into the pocket of the investor that bought out Richard's company. Very sensibly, Kate suggests that first they should get drunk and then contact their geek whiz-kid son, Matt (Jack Wilkinson), to hack into the investor's computer system. When they learn that he has absconded to Paris with all the money, they decide to follow and get their pension fund back.