flawed but entertaining romantic comedy

Rating: Null/10 (19 September 2004)

The half dozen or so love stories that comprise 'Love Actually' are neither highly dramatic nor emotionally earth-shattering in nature - and I suspect that this is exactly how writer/directer Richard Curtis intended it to be. This epic paean to the glory of romance involves, for the most part, run-of-the-mill (albeit middle or upper middle class) Londoners just trying to find a little happiness for themselves in the arms of that one true love.
Hugh Grant, as the newly elected Prime Minister of England, unskilled in the ways of romance, leads a large and gifted cast through this roundelay of love, actors of no less a stature than Colin Firth, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson, Laura Linney, Alan Rickman, Billy Bob Thornton and Rowan Atkinson, just to name a few. They all portray characters in various states of romantic upheaval. Some are headed towards blissful, happily-ever-after endings, while others suffer the pangs of jealousy, infidelity and unrequited love. The best thing about 'Love Actually' is that it doesn't take itself too seriously and it isn't afraid to take its time introducing and developing its large roster of characters. The film, as a whole, has the kind of unhurried, laidback charm that one expects from a movie with Grant in the lead. The worst thing about the film is its over reliance on those fairy tale 'only in the movies' moments that seem to be an integral part of virtually every romantic comedy that comes down the pike these days (there's a scene set in Wisconsin that is so lacking in basic credibility that I was absolutely positive it would turn out to be a dream of one of the characters. It didn't). The film culminates in a jaw-droppingly bad scene near the end in which a young boy crashes through airport security with full approval of his beaming stepfather so that the tyke can tell a little classmate of his who is boarding a plane that he loves her. The sequence is a bit tough to take in this post-9/11 world, especially when the violins start swelling, cuing our tear ducts to well up in approval for this horrific stunt. There's also a bit of gratuitous America-bashing in Thornton's portrayal of the President of the United States, a rather mean spirited diversion in a film whose tone is otherwise all sweetness-and-light. It's perfectly fine for American films to portray the president as a venal, lecherous bully, but it takes a certain amount of gall for a British film to do so.
'Love Actually' suffers the fate of many films that attempt to write large on too broad a canvas; some of the characters and stories inevitably turn out to be more involving and compelling than others. That is simply the nature of the beast. I certainly wish that the troubled marriage of Rickman and Thompson could have been explored in more depth, since Thompson provides the few moments of genuine feeling and heartbreak in the movie. And certainly one or two of the other lesser stories could have been dropped from the lineup with little or no harm done to the film overall. Given that limitation, however, it must be stated that 'Love Actually' succeeds more often than it fails. This is partly because the cast is so appealing and partly because much of the writing is really very funny. The choice of background music is occasionally obvious, though the songs frequently make wry and witty commentary on the action taking place on screen.
'Love Actually' is definitely a long movie (135 minutes to be exact) and it does leave a few loose ends untied at the closing credits. But that, perhaps, is as it should be. Life, after all, leaves some loose ends untied as well.