Curtis directorial debut fails to deliver

Rating: 6/10 (5 January 2004)

Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson, Colin Firth - Few first-time directors can ever have assembled such a formidable British cast. But Richard Curtis is no ordinary first-time director, and Love Actually is no ordinary debut. The writer and producer of Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill has given himself the job of helming his most ambitious project yet - A multi-stranded love story following the lives of nine Londoners in the run-up to Christmas.
Grant is the newly-elected post-Blair Prime Minister who develops a crush on his Downing Street maid; Rickman's marriage to Thompson is on the rocks after his head is turned by a younger woman; Neeson is a widower coming to grips with his loss by helping his step-son woo his classroom sweetheart; and Firth plays a writer who falls in love with his Portuguese cleaning lady (Lucia Moniz).
Some of the plot-threads lend themselves well to this kind of sugar-coated vignette: Martin Freeman (from TV's The Office) and Joanna Page play stand-ins in a pornographic film - the gag being that they are very tentatively trying to ask each other out while simulating sex acts - but others lack gravitas as a result. Emma Thompson gives a typically emotive performance as a wronged wife who keeps up appearances for the sake of her children, but the power of her scenes are diluted by the frivolity and silliness going on elsewhere
And therein lies the problem: The key to Curtis' previous successes has been his ability to engage audience affection for his characters. Here there is simply not enough time for this to happen. The action shifts clumsily from scene to scene. Further sub-plots are introduced with yet more hapless, lovelorn characters. It is almost as if Curtis has emptied out his 'Ideas Book' and lumped everything together under the flimsy premise that: a) they are all based in London; b) it's nearly Christmas; and c) er. that's it.
Well, almost. What really links all the stories (as the Prime Minister solemnly states in a voice-over at the beginning) is that 'Love Actually IS All Around'. Indeed, the soundtrack to the movie is dominated by a bastardised version of the Trogg's 'Love is all Around' with the word 'Love' replaced by 'Christmas' which a washed-up, has-been rock star (Bill Nighy) is promoting to try and get to the coveted Christmas Number One slot - a nod to Wet Wet Wet's cover of the same song which topped the charts for an eternity thanks to the popularity of Four Weddings and a Funeral. There is no disputing the fact that Curtis is a true romantic - his pursuit of lump-in-the-throat cinematic moments is as relentless as ever and there is plenty here to melt even the coldest of hearts. What irks is his tendency to pigeon-hole his characters into white middle-class dreamers. Not content with making Notting Hill look like a suburb of Henley-on-Thames, here he proceeds to do the same with the rest of London - no wonder they elected Hugh Grant Prime Minister. Love may very well be all around, but men who don't have floppy hair, perfect teeth and Etonian accents, and women who don't look like Kiera Knightley need not apply.
When he strays from his well-trodden path of frothy romantic comedy, you get a glimpse of something deeper. Laura Linney's character is in love with a co-worker but she is stricken with guilt about her mentally ill brother who is emotionally dependent on her. Her scenes are nicely handled, understated and genuinely moving but it is hard to take them seriously in the context of the rest of the movie. They are also so infrequent as to be rendered meaningless - you can almost hear Curtis saying: 'Cut. Wow, that was a bit intense - quick, let's play an up-beat pop song and show some footage of Hugh Grant dancing'.
And in fairness, he's probably right to do so. It is almost impossible to imagine any Curtis vehicle NOT featuring Grant stuttering, grinning bashfully and generally larking about. It is, let's face it, a winning formula. In this case, it really shouldn't work - after all, he is competing for screen-time with eight other stories - and yet he somehow pulls it off. There are some patchy moments: In one preposterous scene he lambastes the US President (a nice, sleazy cameo by Billy-Bob Thornton) in front of a packed press conference after catching him frisking McCutcheon the night before. One wonders what George Bush would have to do to Cherie Blair before Tony jeopardised their 'Special Relationship'. No matter. It is this story that carries the essence of the wider message - love will beat all the odds and win the day. The chemistry between Grant and McCutcheon in surprisingly strong, but it is the chemistry between Grant and Curtis that carries the movie - so much so that the other stories really only serve as padding, which is a shame because there are some nice moments scattered amongst the cloying sentimentality.
Love Actually is a hit largely thanks the reputations of it's director and cast (as well as the main players, there are cameos from the likes of Denise Richards, Claudia Schiffer, Ant and Dec and the ubiquitous Rowan Atkinson), but whether it will match the long-term success of Curtis' previous efforts remains to be seen. Personally, I think the film would have benefited from a stronger central plot and fewer story-lines. Romantic comedy does not lend itself well to the subtleties and complexities of inter-connected plot-threads. This style is better suited to more off-beat (and generally less commercial) movies such as Paul Thomas Anderson's excellent Magnolia.
6/10