Guarunteed to win at Christmastime

Rating: 4/10 (18 June 2019)

I'm probably the only person in the world who didn't want to immediately return to the movie theaters and watch Love Actually again and again when it came out. With a huge cast, a Christmas setting, and tiny romantic vignettes that are unrealistically optimistic and allow for very little character development, it's a cinch that this movie would be beloved by all. There are so many storylines, you're bound to find someone you like, and there's probably someone in the cast that drew you to the movie theaters in the first place. And since it's Christmas, everyone likes movies with happy endings. I'll stick with my Hallmark marathon, but if you love this movie, you're in good company with millions of others.
Bill Nighy plays a burnt out pop singer turning his hit song into a Christmas song, which we're treated to about a dozen times throughout the movie. He's alone during the holidays, but he does have a steadfast friend in his manager, Gregor Fisher. Liam Neeson is a widower whose extremely young son believes he's fallen in love with a classmate who's moving. Rather than sitting the infant down and explaining that he'll experience exactly the same feeling with another classmate the next term, Liam tells his son that love is the most important thing in the world, and he has to declare his feelings before the girl leaves town. I know it's supposed to be heartwarming, but Thomas Sangster is in middle school! It left my eyes dry. Hugh Grant is the British Prime Minister, and while he's bored to tears dealing with the American president, Billy Bob Thornton, his wandering eye catches a lowly maid, Martine McCutcheon. This vignette is intended to inspire a belief that true love conquers any social, economic, and class boundary. First of all, that's not the case, and second of all, if it didn't work for me in Cinderella, Love Actually isn't going to change my mind.
Next up is Alan Rickman, a hardworking businessman with very little happiness in his life. Sparks fly with his secretary Heike Makatsch, but since her hair and makeup reek of "fun fling" and his wife Emma Thompson is given a tearjerker scene to get the audience on her side, you can bet your bottom dollar he's spending Christmas at home. I was rooting for Heike to make Alan happy, so without giving definitive spoilers, let's go to the next vignette. Colin Firth takes a vacation for Christmas after getting dumped, and completely on the rebound, he falls in love with Lucia Moniz. He speaks no Portuguese, and she speaks no English. Again, this is supposed to be charming and sweet.
Laura Linney gives American audiences someone without an accent to root for, and as she has a crush on the hunk at the office, Rodrigo Santoro, her romantic life has always taken a backseat to her on-call care for her mentally-off brother. Do you think the office Christmas party might give her a break? Once again, we have another plot point that doesn't think any further than the morning after. Martin Freeman and Joanna Page are given what's probably supposed to be the funniest segment. They're body doubles who spend their days on a film set acting in sex scenes, but they're both incredibly polite and shy. Rowan Atkinson has a small but important role in other people's vignettes, but isn't given a romance.
And finally, we have the most famous segment: Andrew Lincoln holding up signs outside Keira Knightley's house telling her he loves her. Why is this romantic when her husband is his best friend, Chiwetel Ejiofor? Why is this teaching people good things, that "at Christmas, we tell the truth" when on an earlier sign, he told Keira to lie to her husband and pretend Christmas carolers had rung the doorbell? And what will happen the day after Christmas? Why are we supposed to root for this vein of infidelity when we were supposed to root against Alan Rickman's office affair?
As you can guess, I didn't add this movie to my Christmas collection. If you've never seen it, and my arguments make sense to you, you might want to skip it. If you've seen it and love it, you probably haven't made it this far in my review.