Could have used a few less subplots

Rating: 7/10 (21 February 2005)

This was actually a pleasant surprise. If you can suspend disbelief long enough to buy Hugh Grant as Prime Minister of England, and you believe that the PM's job is so un-demanding that he's got nothing better to do than dance around in his underwear and pursue romance with pretty staffers, then this movie may be for you.
As ensemble casts go, this one pretty much puts all preceding movies to shame. The question isn't who is in this movie, but rather who *isn't* in this movie? There is some great talent here, including Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Laura Linney, Alan Rickman, Keira Knightley... the problem is, the cast list just goes on and on, leaving each of the actors with only a few short scenes in which to develop their characters. Quite simply, the movie just tries to do too much.
There are some memorable sub-plots (Hugh Grant as Prime Minister, Bill Nighy as a washed-up popstar itching for a comeback, Liam Neeson as a recently widowed father, etc. But there are others that just seem thrown in for no particular reason. Yes, the stories are all interconnected, as it turns out, but you never spend enough time with most of the characters to really ever care about them or to bother trying to sort out how the connections work.
One of the best parts of the movie involves the amazingly talented-for-her-age Olivia Olsen belting out a Mariah Carey song so well that she made me overlook the fact that it was a Mariah Carey song. It's hard to believe that she was only ten years old when she did the part.
Saccharine, sugary-sweet and light, this is a perfect date movie. Just don't expect to discover any deep revelations about life or even about love. All in all, this is a decent movie. But with a few less subplots, the main characters could have been much more fully developed... and it could have been a much better movie.