Taking it a little too serious, actually

Rating: 7/10 (14 February 2009)

The sheer number of "best-movie-ever" and "total-crap" comments left me somewhat surprised, as I never imagined this movie to be polarizing. Myself, I find it to be an extremely charming romantic comedy with a fair amount of flaws, which did not destroy my viewing (and, dare i say, re-viewing) experience. I believe the mistake made my most people who hated the movie was thinking it's a movie about Love or Relationships, while it's clearly not. It's about Falling in love, Dreaming of love, Imagining love. And it does a pretty good job at it. I mean, comments like "he hardly knows her", "it won't work" completely miss the point: it's not about whether it'll work or not, it's just th falling-in-love part - although I could do without the wedding scenes in the end. The sexism criticism is way exaggerated: the movie IS about superficiality, and the powerful man - hot young woman pattern is the most common one, and one based on superficiality. The movie doesn't glorify it, it just uses it (eg. in the Alan Rickman - Emma Thompson story). The Hugh Grant story, however, really bombed. Grant is terribly cast, the Britain-America thing is awfully cheesy, and it goes too far to convince us it's a great thing that a Prime Minister's first priority is falling in love with his assistant. It totally lacks the simplicity and charming everyday-quality the other stories have. Btw, the Claudia schiffer thing: it's a joke, people! It's not insinuated that you should treat grief with dating a supermodel. Geez... Clearly not the best joke in the movie, but relax... And enjoy.