Review
LOVE ACTUALLY
Starring Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson and Emma Thompson
Directed by Richard Curtis
Opens Friday, November 6
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What to do with old abandoned stories of idealized love? Well, if you’re Richard Curtis, you piece them together in a tribute to love to form the "ultimate" romantic comedy. Well, this is the theory anyway. Whether it works or not will depend largely on your current state of heart – and your tolerance and sensitivity towards all things "warm and fuzzy."
Getting his start penning episodes for the Rowan Atkison vehicles Black Adder and Mr. Bean, Curtis then made the successful transition to the big screen, writing and co-producing the runaway hits Four Weddings and A Funeral, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones’ Diary. The success of these films rests in Curtis’s penchant for well-timed societal humour in which quirky, eccentric (albeit believable) characters are thrown together and played off each other for laughs.
In his latest offering, Love Actually, Curtis takes a seat in the director’s chair for the first time – which is no small feat given the ensemble cast of Kasdan-like proportions. Set in a post 9-11 London (something the film asks us to take into account), the story is no less than seven love stories loosely tied together. They range from a cheekily single British prime minister’s (Hugh Grant) encounter with his young servant (Martine McCutcheon) to a recently widowed father (Liam Neeson) aiding and abetting his stepson who is struggling to deal with the unrequited love of a schoolyard crush.
The performances and writing are inconsistent and at least one story could have been dropped altogether. Yet the laughs remain consistent. There are some surprisingly moving moments (including a stand out performance by Emma Thompson) and at least three of the stories are good enough to have stood on their own.
Curtis attempts to gently guide us into his intoxicating world by bookending the film with images of loved ones embracing at airport terminals – a very sweet sentiment when taken at face value by your inner romantic. And it works, so long as the cynic in you can avoid thinking of all those other images not shown: people frozen in endless lines, invasive searches, lost luggage and lost souls, all those lonely corpses staring mindlessly at the departure screen.
But recent circumstances have allowed me to keep that old crank in check and view this movie for what it is – a cutesy piece of escapist filmmaking that offers an optimistic view of humanity to a society that has grown increasingly cynical. I was able to enjoy it – I hope you can too. |
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