Love Actually (2003)
Written by and Directed by Richard Curtis
Chiwetel Ejiofor, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Keira Knightley, Laura Linney, Andrew Lincoln, Martine McCutcheon, Liam Neeson, Bil Nighy, Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Rowan Atkinson, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Martin Freeman, Heike Makatsch, Kris Marshall, Lucia Moniz, Joanna Page, Rodrigo Santoro, Abdul Salis, Nina Sosanya.
Five weeks out from Christmas, and the lives of several people in London are intertwined, and their individual love lives.
David (Grant) is the newly elected Prime Minister of Britain. He is famously single, having devoted his life to politics and never bothered with finding love. That is until he meets one of his staff members Natalie (McCutcheon).
David’s sister is Karen (Thompson), who is married to media boss Harry (Rickman). He is having an emotional affair with his secretary Mia (Makatsch). Also working for Harry is Sarah (Linney), who is in love with co-worker Karl (Santoro). Sarah’s best friend Jamie, has just had his heart broken, so travels to France to get away, and meets local Portugese Aurelia (Moniz), and slowly builds a friendship with her, despite neither of them speaking the same language.
Karen’s best friend is Daniel (Neeson), whose wife has just passed, leaving her son /his stepson, Sam (Brodie Sangster) in his care. Fearing that Sam is in pain, he learns that he is actually in love.
Most of these people come together for the wedding of Peter and Juliet (Ejiofor and Knightley), where Mark (Lincoln) is the best man – whose dislike for Juliet is secretely more. Finally there is Colin and Tony (Marshall and Salis). Colin is heading to the US to find love, and Tony is a porn director, whose two ‘stand in’ cast members John and Judy (Freeman and Page) strike up conversations mid shoots.
This was actually (pun intended) my first time watching this film, and while it tugged at the heart strings at times… I didn’t ‘love’ it (pun intended).
My first gripe, is there were just WAY too many characters to keep track of. My synopsis written above was one of my longest that I had to write. There were a couple of characters who were extremely well written (more on that in a sec) but there were at least half a dozen that we really didn’t need to invest screen time in.
A big plus for me was Linney’s Sarah, who has to put her family needs before her own. Having a similar situation in my own family, this hit home about what the future might be, and she absolutely delivers in her role. I found her arc to be the most heartbreaking.
The pacing was a little slow, and at a hefty 135m runtime, there is so much to get through. As said previously, if some characters had been omitted this would have improved both the pacing and the runtime. The age old saying, less is more.
The score and soundtrack is fun, as the backdrop of the whole story is the cover song of rocker Billy Mack’s (Nighy) “Christmas is all around me”. There are also plenty of popular songs from this time period splattered throughout, and a very engaging score in the final parts of the film
The screenplay is first rate, with plenty of British humour. There is also a couple of clever references to some of the stars own films (Bend it Like Beckham and Harry Potter).
This was quite good, but could have been so much better.
3/5