| Love Actually (2003) | |
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Rating: 7.6/10 (530,005 votes) Director: Richard Curtis Writer: Richard Curtis Stars: Hugh Grant, Martine McCutcheon, Liam Neeson Runtime: 135 min Rated: R Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance Released: 14 Nov 2003 |
| Plot: Follows the lives of eight very different couples in dealing with their love lives in various loosely interrelated tales all set during a frantic month before Christmas in London, England. | |
“From the creator of Four Weddings And A Funeral” Those very words should have warned me! There we had a film that everyone raved on about being “the greatest film ever” and other such nonsense, and in the end it was a film I could quite happily go the rest of my life without seeing again. Well, now we have Love Actually, a film which starts off promising, but soon degenerates.
Telling multiple stories with one common theme, love, Richard Curtis not only wrote this time, but stepped out and directed too. On board there is a wealth of British thespians, accompanied by a few cameo parts from both sides of the water. With the wealth of talent on board, it should have gone well. We have Bill Nighy as an aging rock-star who is trying to make a comeback with a truly awful Christmas record (a re-working of Love Is All Around, the hit used in 4 Weddings…see what they did there, clever eh? Erm…no!) Then there is Hugh Grant, a newly elected Prime Minister who has the shadow of the bad government before him to make up for. Alan Rickman is a man in a mid-life crisis, with his eye on the younger woman. Colin Firth is a guy who leaves his wife after she has an affair. There are other stories woven in (a man who has lost his wife, and is coaching his step-son on love…a pair of actors who spark a friendship on set…and so on) All with the theme of Love.
It could have been so good, and indeed it starts off very promising. Set in the run-up to Christmas, we are first introduced to that awful record sung badly by Nighy, then thrown from one story to another. All good so far, with an enjoyable mix of characters. However, after half an hour I found myself looking at my watch, convinced I had been there for over an hour. At the hour mark I was positively bored. At one-and-a-half-hour stage the nausea was rising. By the end, I just had to get out of the screen!
So, where’s the problem? Simply put, too much treacle! A rom-com is good, I can cope with that. Even some chick-flicks are bearable. This, however, is layered with sugar so thick you could rot an elephant’s tusks in a day! The ‘love’ elements would have been fine, but once the sentimentality of what a wonderful time of year Christmas can be is stirred into the mix, you start to realise that the film is actually a bit of a turd!
The film could have benefited from a chop of 1/2 hour or so to trim up the stories, and even to exorcise some plot strands completely (such as the 2 actors) would have benefited it no-end. The elements with Nighy are genius (especially his Ant & Dec interview), and (dare I say it), even Hugh Grant is amusing. The rest is just sentimental, twee, hogwash (and I mean that in the nicest sense of the word). There are far better romantic comedies out there, and I beg everyone to find one of them instead.
If, however, you are one of the people who thought Four Weddings was the greatest film ever made, and that Notting Hill was almost as good, I offer my condolences on the death of your taste and common sense, and recommend this film to you.
