How Richard could have made a Bucketful...

Rating: Null/10 (7 January 2004)

This film was 2 hours and 9 minutes long. There were eight (count 'em!) different love stories to follow. In some films, there are four stories to follow, and they all come together rather neatly packaged in the end. See Pulp Fiction, Snatch, Go etc. In a romantic comedy, more than one love story can be an interesting idea, if pulled off correctly. Otherwise it can just be vomit-inducing fluff. There were some great ideas here, great comic set pieces, an underused Rowan Atkinson and a helluvalotta stars from British TV (Teachers, anyone?) and film. The theme of the film is, of course, love is all around. I myself certainly felt like every female I saw after the film was a potential mate. This film will do that to you.
It's a good idea, in the long run, but, as a writer, this is what I would have done: With a Niagara Falls sized stream of ideas flowing out of my head, such as these, I would have made 3, 4 or 5 different films out of this. Curtis could have easily done that and made a packet load out of it. Of course it defeats the idea of mass story lines and mass stars, but for a directorial debut, Curtis seems too eager to please. And why? After Notting Hill, Four Weddings, penning Bridget Jones 1 (and 2!) this would have been a sure thing for him however he played it.
Each story strand is a work of well-crafted fiction, each character more or less three dimensional, even though a few story strands have split ends (in layman's terms, they don't work and they don't end.)
One major problem is that he doesn't stick with certain story lines long enough for them to develop, and some just develop too quickly and are quickly thrown away. Oh well. Still a good film, but I would feel more comfortable watching it on DVD in instalments rather than sitting through 2 hours and 9 minutes of waiting for this to end. So all in all, a good first effort, if a little cheesy. One more thing though; the sombre sad part of a romantic comedy comes in around about the mid to last quarter of the film, where the two leads argue about something or other, making the final payoff a more desperate sight for the viewer. However, with eight couples going through angst, a rather sombre mid section drags into a soggy, bittersweet tear-fest and doesn't churn out many laughs. A shame, but worth watching for the sheer spectacle of the ensemble cast.