Total rubbish, actually (Spoilers warning)

Rating: Null/10 (1 July 2004)

Love Actually is a collection of stories about love, affecting the lives of a group of people, including a divorcee, a widower, a Prime Minister, a lonely American and a bride, each one struck by Cupids arrow and everyone of them feeling the pinch. Directed by Richard Curtis, Love Actually is a nauseating glimpse through the rose tinted glasses of a director who seems to have left reality behind when his pen hit the pad. It all seemed so promising. Richard Curtis, the man who co-penned the legendary Blackadder series, writing and directing a film starring Hugh Grant? This had winner written all over it. The result though is a film that so unmercifully throws the message of love at you, you begin to realise it is a four letter word. So what went wrong? Starting off the film with a voice over speaking of September 11th seems far too much a blatant attempt to commandeer an audience's emotions. Following this with a wedding couple being serenaded with the song All you need is love', it's then that the viewers know that the sickening feeling in their stomachs is not from an over liberal sprinkling of salt on their popcorn, but instead a film whose obsession with love would make Cupid himself consider a career change. Things are not helped on the cringe monitor by Liam Neeson, forced to teach his young son how to woo a girl. The cringe monitor is put to good use later with Colin Firth as a writer falling in love with his maid, and left with nothing else to do other than play lovesick puppy to a buttoned up sex kitten. The main plot, being the Prime Minister (played well by Hugh Grant) falling for his tea lady, is an engaging enough story to dominate over the sub plot stories that fight for equal billing. These include a wife (Emma Thompson) who believes her husband is having an affair, and the husband (Alan Rickman) giving her good reason to think so. However one good story is hampered by at least two entirely useless ones, such as a man (Kris Marshall) going off to America in order to get as much sex as possible (is that love, actually?) and two porn stars falling in love on set. Wishful thinking is evident in many scenes particularly when the Prime Minister (Grant) announces to the President of the United States that he refuses to be bullied. It is then that the viewer is once more thrown into an Alice In Wonderland territory; only this time the story itself feels written by the March hare. While a stab at reality is made by the inclusion of a woman trapped by her obligation to care for her mentally ill brother, the director leaves this unresolved, perhaps stepping away from a situation that compromises it's sunnier aspects. The films saving grace is Bill Nighy who plays an aging rocker out to promote his latest single to death to insure it being a Christmas number one. His scenes are generally funny and hint at the film it might have been had it been freed from the constraints of it's middle class shackles. What the world needs now is love, but not bad films written with good intentions, and Curtis' failing is his over enthusiasm to wear his heart on his sleeve, a sleeve that might be running out of tricks.