Love Boat Actually

Rating: Null/10 (30 July 2004)

While watching Love Actually, I was struck how closely the formula followed the formula of the ABC network's Love Boat series. Over a restricted space of time, you cut between several stories of love in different phases, allotting each story about 15 minutes apiece. Unfortunately, the writing for this movie is about on a par with the writing for the Love Boat: It relies on clichÃ©s, cheesy dialog and a good helping of Deus Ex Machina to insure a happy ending for one and all. In the IMDb trivia entry, it is noted that some of the dialog was taken from unused scenes from "Four Weddings and a Funeral", which falls nicely in line with the Love Boat's habit of recycling plots over its lengthy run.
To give credit to Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson, they threw themselves into this movie and probably gave it more effort than the material deserved. I found myself not being as involved with the characters as I did feeling sorry for the actors.
Still, if The Love Boat is your cup of tea - by all means, pick this up in the video store. You may miss Julie, Gopher and the rest of the gang, and London sure isn't Cabo San Lucas, but you will find the story lines familiarly comforting and Ted McGinley (Your Ship's Photographer) is nowhere to be seen.