Whatever possessed Richard Curtis? Maybe his inner naughty schoolboy

It was a shock to all of us who loved "Four Weddings and a Funeral", "Notting Hill" and, yes, even the much-maligned "Love, Actually" when Richard Curtis made the commercial for the 10:10 campaign called "No Pressure". The 10:10 people had to take it down from their website in no time, and no wonder - it was spectacularly poor judgement to post it in the first place. In brief, the set-up was this: the short film shows various scenes where someone high up - a teacher, a manager, a football trainer - explains the 10:10 campaign concept (to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 10 per cent by 10 October 2010) and then asks his/her audience who would like to join the campaign - and who would not. "No pressure", the establishment figure says sweetly to the refuseniks, only to press a red button a moment afterwards that blows them to smithereens. The victims include a plucky French footballer, some hung-over-looking office workers, and two children. The commercial quite rightly caused an outrage, and the scandal was aptly called "Splattergate".

I'm not going to blog at any length about the utter sick-makingness of this short: this has already been done elsewhere. The only thing I believe people have missed out on commenting is that those killed aren't even vocal opponents to the Cause: they just don't feel like joining it. It made me think of the TV film "The Wave" which I watched about a hundred years ago. Not even opting out is an option. As a dystopia, the brave new world of "No Pressure" takes some beating.

The point that puzzled me when I'd stopped shivering at the contents was: where's the joke? Even if you did think, as at least some of the 10:10 campaigners seem to have done, that anyone who didn't embrace their cause was evil and deserved punishment, a revenge wish-fulfilment fantasy isn't the same thing as a joke, is it? If you hire Richard Curtis, it's reasonable to assume that you are looking for something funny. If you want a horror film and/or a cautionary tale, you would probably go somewhere else.

The worrying part about this is that Curtis's last film - "The Boat that Rocked" - was also completely humour-free, and not a little nasty. Frankly, it stank. So is Curtis losing his mojo?

There are those who claim that he didn't have much mojo to start with, but that's unfair. Also, in my opinion, his sentimentality, which is widely criticised, is not such a bad thing. I believe you have to risk falling into the sentimentality trap if you want to be truly moving. Sometimes the result may be mawkish, but at other times you can strike gold. I mistrust the praise "unsentimental" - it can often mean shallow, distant and cynical.

There's another side of Curtis which annoys me, though, and that is what you could call the naughty schoolboy side. I never really warmed to the Blackadder series, in spite of the fact that the main character was a villain, and one of the reasons was that especially the two first series were full of puerile and "bad taste" humour. I suppose that's why some people - in some cases the same ones who get toothache from all the happy endings in "Love Actually" - like it so much. It's probably what's called "anarchic humour". But I confess it does nothing for me, and I believe we have the "anarchic humour" element to blame for "The Boat that Rocked" and "No Pressure".

In the case of the "Boat", it reeked of the playground: here it was again, the old school hierarchy where the "cool" (and perfectly revolting) males rule the roost and can feel free to hurt and ridicule the "nerdy" (sweet-natured) ones at any time. I had hoped I would never see its like again, much less be invited to embrace it. This is also the film that finds it hilarious that one of the Rock Boat's opponents is called Twatt. The non-existent joke in "No Pressure" may, at a guess, have been that the expression "no pressure" often means the exact opposite. Then Curtis's inner schoolboy ran riot with the idea and put a "bang-bang-you're-dead" spin on it.

To sum up, Curtis has always been a bit hit and miss. He can score beautiful bull's-eyes like "Four Weddings" and "Notting Hill" - and if you think it's easy to create a perfect romcom, I suggest you have a try - and part-hits like "Blackadder", "Love Actually" and "The Vicar of Dibley". (The premise of the "Vicar" palls after a while, but the episode where the villagers stage a Nativity play is perfect: highlights include David trying to humanise Herod, Alice as the Virgin Mary reacting suprisingly well to Peter Brook-style directing and giving the vicar's boorish Joseph what for in an improvised rehearsal scene, and Geraldine actually standing up for her faith and explaining why she does think the story of Christ is "The Greatest Story Ever Told".) And then once in a while, Curtis misses the target completely. However, the "Doctor Who" episode "Vincent and the Doctor", which he scripted, shows signs that he is regaining his aim. It was uneven, but the ending, including the scene where the Doctor gently explains to his companion Amy why Vincent van Gogh still chose to kill himself even after they'd shown him that he would be appreciated one day, had me blubbing. It was moving and quite profound, and in its humane message a hundred years from the "No Pressure" disaster.