Chalet Girl

Directed by Phil Traill. Starring Felicity Jones, Ed Westwick, Bill Bailey, Sophia Bush, Brooke Shields, Bill Nighy 12A cert, gen release, 96 min

THERE IS, in hell, a special corner set aside for useless British comedies. It's not that they're so much worse than their American equivalents. They're just bad in a very particular way. Laid low by a hostility to ambition, humbled by conspicuous lack of glamour, they wander grimly around the streets in dressing gowns clutching cups of cooling tea. Look, it's Black Ball, that crown-green bowling thing with Paul Kaye. Hide – it's the supernaturally dreadful Three and Out. If we hang around too long, It's a Wonderful Afterlifemight turn up.

Let's be fair. Chalet Girlis not the worst of the bunch. If The Boat That Rockedwas powering down in the street, you'd happily – well, fairlyhappily – escape in a car driven by Phil Traill's only modestly terrible film.

This is one of those films that has sprung from an idle observation on a minor cultural phenomenon. “Hey, what about those girls who travel to Switzerland to service chalets for rich skiers. There’s a good film in that. Isn’t there?” Well, there may well be. But Mr Traill has not directed it.

Confirming British comedy’s unrepentant obsession with class, the film casts Felicity Jones as an ordinary girl who, having lost her job at the supermarket, points Dad to the TV dinners and makes for the lucrative slopes. Before long, she has encountered the snobbish co-worker who – as sure as Bill Nighy’s the louche boss – will eventually come to be a friend.

Before that happens, Felicity will have to fall in love with a posh bloke and, after overcoming a fear of heights picked up during her mother’s fatal car crash, win the big prize at some horrible downhill event.

The actors look uncomfortable, the script is entirely composed of clichés, and the production design would shame the makers of a sofa commercial. Still, Bill Bailey is quite funny as Jones's dad. So, for that alone, Chalet Girlsits one step above Kevin and Perry Go Large.