It has been heralded as the next big British cinematic triumph: a hit set to sweep America off its feet during the Christmas period.

But the prime exporters of stuttering British charm, the team behind Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones's Diary, appear to have worn out their welcome across the Atlantic.

Love Actually, the ensemble film directed by Richard Curtis, was yesterday dismissed with an excoriating review in the New York Times which called it as an "indigestible Christmas pudding". Reviews in the New York Post and Wall Street Journal were lukewarm at best.

Set in the weeks before Christmas, the film is a patchwork of nine love stories, including the film-makers' regular cast members Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, and Rowan Atkinson, plus Emma Thompson, Martine McCutcheon and Liam Neeson.

The Times's critic, AO Scott, said it is "nearly two and a quarter hours of cheekiness, diffidence and high tone smirking - it is more like a record label's greatest hits compilation or a 'very special' sitcom clip reel show than an actual movie".

The Post also noted the feeling that viewers had been here before. The critic Jonathan Freeman said the film "cannibalises whole scenes" from the team's previous movies "including at least three sequences involving shy men making a last-minute dash to make a splashy declaration of love to a woman in some unlikely public place".

As for its feel-good credentials, the Times's critic was equally scathing, referring to the "calloused, leering" soul of the movie. "The film's governing idea of love is both shallow and dishonest," he wrote, adding that the film swerved "between cynicism and sincerity without quite knowing the difference between them".

There was at least one good review in USA Today, which probably holds more sway over middle America than its more highbrow rivals. It gave the film three stars out of four. "Love Actually is irresistible," wrote Claudia Puig. "You'd have to be Ebenezer Scrooge not to walk out smiling."