It's not Love Actually; It's a Cheesy Love Fantasy

Rating: 2/10 (3 September 2017)

Love Actually is a lot like actual love---it's wonderful until it isn't. Then everything blows up, leaving you to pick up the pieces of your devastated reality.
Relax. I'm only kidding. Love really is wonderful, even the struggles. The movie Love Actually, not so much.
The first 30 minutes or so are downright hilarious, featuring a mix of charming British humor and broader appeal jokes as well. The setup of each storyline features likable characters in relatable situations. You root for everything to work out. You want all of them to be happy.
Then, through no fault of the characters, you change your attitude. Instead of rooting for the characters, you become apathetic, at best. Why? Because the movie makes every story nauseating with irritatingly manipulative music, cuts to closeups of hopeful or gleeful faces to force viewers to elicit the "hooray" emotions. It's all very painful and frustrating.
The movie is called Love Actually (which is a great title, by the way), but so little of what occurs in the movie can be passed off as something that would actually happen. A more appropriate title would be Love Fantasy.
Thirty minutes into the movie (again, the beginning shows promise and is mostly delightful), all the believable buildups have morphed into shameless fairy tale-like sequences. It's all a bunch of love at first sight silliness. Sorry if this sounds too harsh, but there is no love at first sight. The very concept is shallow and supposes a fundamental misunderstanding of what love is. There can be attraction at first sight, or lust at first sight. But not love.
The most ghastly instance of using music to manipulate the viewers comes during a scene when two people, who have never spoken a word to each other because they don't speak the same language, develop feelings for each other. That is an interesting idea that could have been quite moving if handled deftly. Instead, the moment is a bit more blunt. The music indicates that the man develops loving feelings for the woman when she takes off all her clothes to jump in a lake. Viewers are led to believe that the man felt little for this woman until he saw that she looked good in her underwear, after which he fell in love with her.
So, I guess the message is that you can love someone that you've never spoken to as long and the other person is attractive. It's basically a different version of that thing in movies when the dorky girl takes off her glasses then everyone realizes that she's beautiful and then the main guy character can love her now. The biggest difference between those two cases is that the dorky girl removing her glasses moment usually happens in a movie that clearly isn't taking itself too seriously, whereas Love Actually is posing as a movie that represents realistic love. That's sad to me because many viewers, especially the impressionable young ones, may walk away from this movie confusing attraction for love.
Since I'm unleashing all my gripes with this movie, I may as well mention one more. This one didn't so much make me mad, as much as it confused me. It is also kind of funny in a way. I'm talking about the portrayal of the U.S. President (the movie takes place in England). It casts him as this arrogant, smug, woman harassing pig. Basically, he's a bully. So, when one of the British characters stands up to him, the music swoons once again, indicating to the audience that they should be happy that the American jerk couldn't push people around anymore.
To be honest, I have no idea if this is the perception that people in England have of Americans. Perhaps it is, and the viewers from England really did applaud this moment. But I personally found it all to be laughably cheesy.
That's a pretty accurate summary of my take on the movie overall---laughably cheesy. I'll just leave it at that. I recommend that you take a hard pass on Love Actually.