Love Actually

Ealasaid/ November 11, 2003/ Movie Reviews and Features

Directed by: Richard Curtis
Starring: Bill Nighy, Colin Firth, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson, Keira Knightley, Hugh Grant, Martine McCutcheon, Laura Linney, Thomas Sangster, Alan Rickman
Rated: R for sexuality, nudity and language.
Parental Notes: This is a sweet and charming film, but not one free of sorrow. Teens and mature preteens with a taste for romance will like it, but other young folk will likely find it dull. If you and your children enjoyed Curtis’ other films, this one is a good bet.


As a screenwriter, Richard Curtis has brought us “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Notting Hill,” and “Briget Jones’s Diary,” so it comes as no surprise that his directorial debut is a marvelous romantic comedy which aims high and succeeds admirably.
The premise of the film, as provided by a surprisingly charming voice-over in the beginning, is that love actually is all around us (hence the title), and we should be more aware of it. There are ten intertwining love stories swirling through a network of people which includes the Prime Minister of England and a Portuguese cleaning lady in France. Everyone is interconnected, and everyone is learning something about love. There is sexual love, familial love, first love, impossible love, and even insanely romantic love so over the top that Curtis’ ability to make it work seems like nothing short of a miracle.
Any attempt to actually describe the different romances would be virtually impossible. They are so complexly intertwined that trying to explain them would take a short novel. During the film, however, keeping each story straight is easy. They are simple, straightforward tales that could have been the seeds of their own full length films but instead have been distilled down to light, simple stories and then woven together. While many of the characters seem like stereotypes at first, Curtis has a deft hand with giving them depth in the small amount of screen time each one has.
It’s a pleasure to see Hugh Grant back in fine and charming form as the Prime Minister . He is perfectly suited for Curtis’ material, and shows just enough steel through his usual self-deprecating sweetness to let us accept him as an extremely powerful politician. It’s not only believable when he stands up to the President of the United States but we can’t help cheering for him.
Bill Nighy stars as Billy Mack, an aging rock star with a new single that he knows is absolutely awful. He is too tired and too worn out from his misspent youth to bother trying to sell the new album, so he simply tells everyone exactly what he thinks. His story weaves through the film like a swirl of crinkled glitter in a bottle of chocolate syrup, and the moment when he steps away from a stereotypical rock party complete with available babes to profess his affection to the last person he or the audience expected, it’s surprisingly moving.
Curtis nearly always mixes some true sorrow into his movies (remember the funeral in “Four Weddings and a Funeral”), and this is no exception. Somehow, though, it works, and the poignancy of the sadness brings the romance into more crystallized existence. It’s as though Curtis’ refusal to make his movie all marshmallowy and sweet makes it more believable.
In the end, “Love Actually” convinces us of its premise. Love actually is all around us, we just have to be willing to see it. This is a film to make you appreciate the love around you, no matter what form that love takes.

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