Underwritten and overambitious

Rating: 4/10 (6 November 2004)

'Love Actually', written and directed by Richard Curtis is a romantic dramedy which pretty much runs the gambit in terms of relationship stereotypes. Hunker down, here are the basic story lines: It's a few days until Christmas, and Billy Mack, (Bill Nighy) is a washed up, boozed out former pop idol who has an unlikely hit with a crap Christmas song. With his newly formed fame, he finds his chummy relationship with his slobby, average-Joe manager faltering as he makes the talk show circuit. Sarah (Laura Linney) has had a crush on a co-worker in her office, but she proves to be weighted down by the baggage of having a mentally ill brother who calls her three dozen times a day. Harry (Alan Rickman) is Sarah's boss, who is married to Karen (Emma Thompson), and is seriously considering cheating with his secretary. Hugh Grant is the newly elected Prime Minister of England and Karen's brother, who begins to fall for a member of his staff. Daniel, (Liam Neeson) has just lost his wife to cancer, and his young son reveals that he is in love with a young girl in his class, but doesn't know how to show it. (He's about 10 by the way) Jamie Bennett (Colin Firth) is a writer who breaks up with his girlfriend and falls in love with the Portuguese-speaking girl who cleans his house in the country. And finally, Juliet (Keira Knightley), a newlywed, is bothered by the fact that her husband's best friend Mark (Andrew Lincoln) doesn't seem to like her. Throw in cameos by Rowan Atkinson and Billy Bob Thornton and (I think) you pretty much have the cast.
As you can see, there are a lot of stories going on here, and unfortunately, Curtis put a few too many in. The result is that there was not one story that I truly cared about in 'Love Actually'. The closest I came was feeling for Karen, but I think a lot of it was because Emma Thompson is just so damn good. Situations occurred that made no sense, plots were concluded with unbelievable ease, and by the time we would move on from one scene to another, I had completely forgotten what the situation was with that particular character because I hadn't seen their story for a good twenty minutes or so. It was like Curtis came up with the characters, wrote a paragraph as a treatment for each and then relied on just that paragraph to tell their stories. For example, I felt hardly anything regarding Daniel's loss, the only emotion or feeling in that regard was in the obligatory funeral scene. Basically, a cute film could have been made using just a couple of the characters, and it would have been an okay film. This was simply atrocious and for the most part, sappy. The acting in the film was of course decent, with this cast it had to be, but all of these great actors were wasted with the little bit they were given. And a note to Hugh Grant:
The shrugging, self-deprecating thing has gone from charming to insipid over the course of the last ten years, so drop it. Now.
I suppose that anyone who loves a romantic comedy is going to find this movie good. I found it lame and barely mediocre. Had Curtis not tried to shove the concept of love down our throats with about 20 different characters, it may have been decent, but in this form it turned out to be sub-par. Only for the decent acting jobs and that knock down, drag out Christmas program musical number at the end do I give it a 4/10.
Shelly