The audience laughed, cried and applauded at the end

Rating: 10/10 (8 November 2003)

Richard Curtis's best movie. There's so much in this film, you have to see it a few times to get the full impact. Most of all it's extremely funny, touching and filled with an unusual mixture of cleverness, sappiness and unabashed joy set in both realistic and farcical scenarios. It works so well because beneath it all we feel that Curtis and his cast are sincere about showing us that "love is actually all around." We don't see it because we're not looking for it in this very serious world after 9/11. The second time I went to see the film it was even better. This isn't one to wait for the DVD. Make sure you see it in a theater with other people. It's a cathartic experience, all the hilarity, sappiness and profundity wrapped up in a strange mixture that's hard to explain. All I know is, both times everybody in the theater, including myself, was crying and laughing throughout like unashamed idiots. Curtis and his British cast are just the best. The few American actors have juicy parts, however, including a sly role by Billy Bob Thornton as the American President, and the 12 year old "dream girl" Olivia Olson who sings like an angel, and bursts out of nowhere like a young superstar at the end of the film, in a scene which ties many of the love stories together. (Olson, a phenomenal talent discovered by Curtis and flown to England to sing in the film, also belts out one of my favorite cuts on the soundtrack album, Mariah's "All I Want For Christmas.")
It's hard to analyze why this film succeeds so well, because in the telling it might sound like just an ambitious Christmas chick flick. But I think it transcends its manipulativeness and crassness because, at its core, the film shows the reality that love, ultimately, is the most important thing to all of us.
This is also probably the greatest date flick ever made. Simply a beautiful, uplifting, weird, hilarious, magnificent movie.