Love Actually



I went to see this movie because my girlfriend wanted to see it. And why wouldn't she? The poster to Love Actually is to chick flicks what Mt. Rushmore is American presidents.

The plot is also a combination of every beloved chick flick of the last decade. There are something like ten separate story lines and around two dozen main characters who all represent a different version of love. Love leading to marriage, love between boy and girl, puppy love, love between friends. Liam Neeson plays a widower who has to deal with step-son's first crush, Hugh Grant is a the Prime Minister of Britain who falls in love with a servant, Alan Rickman (in a role that seems written and costume designed for Michael Caine:



See what I mean?) is married to Emma Thompson but thinking about cheating on her, Colin Firth plays an author who falls in love with a Portuguese maid in France, and so forth. It's a cute movie, but I could have done without quite so many story lines. As it is the movie sometimes comes off as more of an experiment by write/director richard Curtis to see if he can make the ur-romantic comedy than to make something truly entertaining.

There is also an odd strain of surrealism that runs through the film, and perhaps that kept me from getting totally in tot he film. There's a scene where the Prime Minster utterly humiliates the President of the United States (Billy Bob Thorton!) in the middle of a live press conference. If that happened in real life, we'd have England bombed flatter than a dinner plate by noon the next day. And there's a really odd bit where one of the British characters goes to Milwaukee, Wisconsin that suggests that everything Richard Curtis knows about Wisconsin he learned from the Penthouse letters column and Playboy's Girls of the Dairy States.

Posted: Sat - November 8, 2003 at      

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