Infuriating, Actually

Rating: Null/10 (3 January 2004)

It must come as a shock to anyone to have hugh grant bring up the events of September 2001 in order to sell a movie at its beginning. To use that actual event which each of us thinks about every day from now on to sell your light and fluffy comedy is pure manipulation of audience's emotions. Having that as your opening gambit didn't put me in a mood to enjoying this film at all.
It is a clever idea to have a number of stories interconnect in some way and have them all come to the same conclusion. I am sure this would have been a better film if Richard Curtis had taken maybe 3 of the better stories and rejected the others. The stories on offer here ranged from the very funny to the downright dreadful, and this was the most annoying aspect of the whole film. An example of this was the contrast between the story involving the aging rock star, desperate to find a hit single despite admitting it was awful, and a totally pointless story about 2 pornography actors having fake sex. The Bill Nighy story has the lions share of the films best moments and it was a shame the whole film couldn't be about his character. It just makes it more annoying that we see as much of this tale as we see Laura Linney's troubled woman and her disabled brother.
Out of all the stories (I think there were 8) only 2 were substantial enough to maintain any interest throughout he film, the rock star story and the one with Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson. The rest of the story lines included the cliched story about a best man falling in love with a married woman, which involved a rendition of all you need is love' in church which made me feel that all I needed was a nail to stick in my eyeball. We also had Hugh Grant being prime minister, which upset me more than any other part of the film, when he gives a cringe making speech about how great Britain is next to the US president The special relationship has become a bad relationship' is the gist of it. I couldn't believe how crass and xenophobic this was, and in real life I hope a real prime minister would have been laughed out of office for such a speech, but the whole country seems to have loved Hugh Grant for it in the film.
The worst story of the film involved Liam Neeson encouraging his son to break security barriers at heathrow airport just to say goodbye to a girl from his school, something he couldn't manage an hour before apparently. Oh and he meets Claudia Schiffer at a surprisingly competent school concert to make up for his dead wife.
Wouldn't the really existential thing to do at the end have been for a hijacked plane to crash into the airport terminal at the end when they are all having their lovey moments at once? To have Hugh Grant's voice over like at the start saying I told you love was all around but you didn't listen so we had to kill all the characters' This is not to say this is a totally bad film. There are enough laughs in the stories that work to make up for the ones that don't, but it still doesn't excuse the fact that half the film shouldn't have been made.