The film received a British premiere in Leicester Square in London on 16 November2003. There Curtis described his film as a "roaring rampage of romance" - a reference to the Quentin Tarantino movie Kill Bill released around the same time with the tagline a "roaring rampage of revenge". The film, released two weeks earlier in the United States, had received a mixed bag of reviews including a particularly poor review from A. O. Scott of the New York Times. Defending the film at the premiere, Curtis said "I'd rather make a film that most of the audience liked and some critics didn't rather than a film that critics loved and nobody wanted to watch."