Pastiche of story snippets with an all-star cast.

Rating: Null/10 (7 November 2003)

Review: Movie: Love Actually
Date: 06 November 03
Venue: DVD = "Definitive Love Actually DVD" - pre-release
====================== Watching this DVD was more revealing than I had imagined it would be. But
what it revealed was distinctly not what was intended. That in itself is a trouble sign to me, because of what was revealed.
This is portrayed to be a really disjointed pastiche of stories, where the viewers will only get short snippets of each story. Richard Curtis has written and directed this contender for the all-time Christmas feel-good film. The cast is large, but it cannot be said that it appears to have been an ensemble piece by any stretch. The cast does not all play together, or even get involved in action that relates to a single story line.
Instead, they play to a theme in small groups, that being: that we all need, are susceptible to, and even strive for love. Of course, love is a good thing, but when the idea that we shall all fall in love is the only unifying factor in a feature film with a starring cast of ten, and a speaking cast of 20 or more, it risks being less than loving for the audience.
The purpose of making a movie is to entertain, and I think it will be very
entertaining to see the all-star cast actually make this jigsaw puzzle of cameos gel into an entertaining piece of cinema. It's said to be a comedy, and I only hope that the full-length version is funny where it intends to be, and not funny for any of the wrong reasons. But based on the DVD, with the extended preview,
two trailers, the making-of documentary, and the character introductions, what's funny is that the producers expect that England and America will dutifully troop to their local multiplexes and pay to watch a bouquet of unrelated stories on a theme, with famous faces trooping across their screens in dizzying profusion.
The marketing DVD established the fact that the producers are banking on the
appeal of Hugh Grant. This is collaborated by the article printed in the same paper's weekly entertainment magazine, which had included the disk. I
sincerely hope that Grant is on screen for enough time to glue this film together by giving continuity to the story-line. I hope his part gives a unifying thread to the movie, because I appreciate there's alot of talent that's on show here, and wish the producers well.
But on the other hand I wish that the producers had used a subsidiary to make the film, as it is not an ensemble piece of the sort that "Welcome to LA", "The Big Chill", or "Day for Night" were. Here, the disparate stories are not likely to do anything other than distract the viewer and detract from each other.