Easy-On-the-Brain Pablum for the Masses

Rating: Null/10 (10 May 2004)

*Spoiler Alert - Spoiler Info Contained in Review*
Why did I hate this well-meaning movie so? Why? Why? It wants to convince us that love, indeed, is everywhere...but all I felt as I watched it was a growing sense of ire.
I couldn't possibly go into All the elements that proved to be so trite and/or offensive to me. That would take too long. Let me just list a few:
Liam Neeson's stepson springs to mind right off the bat. This kid is waaaay beyond precocious...and it's not funny. I felt absolutely zip empathy for this kid as, throughout the movie, he strives to meet his ladylove...a singer-girl he has a crush on. Yawn. I guess they just Had to include this, regrettably.
The reference to Hugh Grant's crush in the film as "fat". Yes, this was very annoying...and stupid. She was curvaceous. That's C-U-R-V-A-C-E-O-U-S.
In fact, this movie has alot of fat bias going on. There's jokes a-plenty when Colin Firth meets his house-keeper's sister, who's large. The father asks Firth if he wants to marry her. No, not the fat one!!! The other one!!! This movie can't get in enough laughs at how funny... fat people are.
Yes, apparently love Is all around...except if you're big. Very uplifting message, that. Thanks for driving it home, for sharing in the fat-bashing that, most certainly, is all around us.
I'm sure there's lots more that annoyed me. But even to have to recall it for this review is an exercise in painful masochism. This review is purely presented as an example of one of the lone voices of extreme dislike for this "crowd-pleaser".
I suppose the achingly artificial and distressingly lavish Christmas pageant at the end (where many of the characters meet up) is the true topper for this movie...about as contrived as can be.
I really detested all of the characters of this movie - and simply did not care At All how it turned out for any of them. A bigger bunch of dimwits in one moive I've never seen...thank goodness!!
It's really a crime, how so much worthwhile British talent was drafted in the name of this kind of schlock. I'm just grateful Sir Laurence Olivier has passed on...at least I didn't have to see Him running about like a giddy loon having various, nauseatingly predictable love mis-adventures that all turn out "right" in the end.