Love Actually Review
by Rose 'Bams' Cooper (bams AT 3blackchicks DOT com)November 11th, 2003
'3BlackChicks Review...'
LOVE ACTUALLY (2003)
Rated R; running time 129 minutes
Studio: Universal Pictures
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Seen at: Eastwood Neighborhood Cinema Group (Lansing, Michigan) Official site: http://www.loveactually.com/
IMDB site: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0314331/combined Writer: Richard Curtis
Director: Richard Curtis
Cast: Hugh Grant, Martine McCutcheon, Liam Neeson, Thomas Sangster, Colin Firth, Lucia Moniz, Laura Linney, Rodrigo Santoro,
Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Heike Makatsch, Keira Knightley, Andrew Lincoln, Bill Nighy, Martin Freeman, Joanna Page, Rodrigo Santoro, Kris Marshall, Billy Bob Thornton, Rowan Atkinson
Review Copyright Rose Cooper, 2003
Review URL:
http://www.3blackchicks.com/2003reviews/bamsloveactually.html
I've never been much of a Hugh Grant fan; in fact, about the only Hugh Grant movie I recall really liking was ABOUT A BOY. But I think I've found the secret to liking Grant: stick him in a huge ensemble cast. And make him shake his booty.
THE STORY (WARNING: **spoilers contained below**)
LOVE ACTUALLY features an ensemble cast of characters whose stories all revolve around a theme that gets the Whifflebat treatment here: Love (Actually) *Is* All Around. Though that usually implies romantic love, the notion is that love comes when it's least expected, as the Cast Of Thousands discover in eight interweaving stories about first love, new love, familial love, unrequited love, recuperative love...you get the idea.
THE UPSHOT
There are a ton of reasons for me to have disliked LOVE ACTUALLY: It had way too many characters to tell good, full stories about, even at a longish 129 minutes. It wasted the criminally talented Emma Thompson. It used Dry British Humor. It had Hugh Grant.
Yet, those same reasons only endeared me more to this movie. And anyway, my lead is a wee bit misleading; to say this is "a Hugh Grant movie", isn't quite accurate. With eight interweaving stories to contend with, Grant's scenario as a newly-smitten new Prime Minister, gave him enough screen time to entertain, without boring me to death with his same ol' Bumbling Englishdude schtick. A little Hugh Grant goes a long, long way.
"A little" being the operative term here; because "a little" is all that we get of each of these stories. This deficit of development would've killed a lesser film; it is to the credit of this talented cast, that they did so much with so little. Perhaps the brevity of story development here, made the situations more immediate for me than would happen in a traditionally-told romantic comedy. And it left me wanting to know much more about each of the scenarios: Did Karen kick Mia's skanky butt? Will the Prime Minister kick the President's butt? Can I ever rid my mind of the image of Billy's butt?
Given the Big Names in this cast, the love stories that I found myself cheering most for, surprised me. The first was the hilarious bit about socially (but not physically) shy porn stand-ins John and Judy; Martin Freeman and Joanna Page deserve a special award for deadpanning under those circumstances. And my heart went out most for the youngest member of the ensemble, Thomas Sangster as Sam. I guess stories of First Love just do it for me - even though the twist here, focusing less on Sam's and stepdad Daniel's loss, brought me up short at first. In any event, I loved every minute Sangster was on-screen; I cringed a bit at some of the words writer/director Richard Curtis put in Sam's mouth, but the shock soon passed.
That's not to say that all went well with LOVE. Even given the short shrift in storyline development across the board, some of the fat could've been trimmed by dropping the weaker subplots (the aging rocker) and beefing up the anorexic (Karen & Harry & Mia, oh my) or potentially more interesting (dropdead gorgeous Karl, Sarah and her coc, uh, romance-blocking brother) storylines. Indeed, I have to wonder why Curtis thought it would be a good idea to spread a movie so thin, with a huge (albeit, talent) cast to dole out stories to in the briefest of time allotments.
But despite its main flaws, LOVE ACTUALLY managed to be charming, funny, and especially as concerns the wise-beyond-his-years Sam, sweet (though thankfully, not overly so). Unless you're a real scrooge, it's a nice way to kick off a holiday movie season.
THE "BLACK FACTOR" [ObDisclaimer: We Are Not A Monolith]
It's not often that I Learn Something from a movie, but the more I see films not based in America (or made primarily by American filmmakers), the more I am faced with the fact - at least as presented on the Silver Screen - that racial issues are not a one-size-fits-all glove that covers the whole planet. And though I'm sure that racism exists in the United Kingdom, it does my heart good to see Black characters, in context, taken for granted.
Hmm. If that didn't come across clearly, know that, in this specific case, that's A Good Thing.
BAMMER'S BOTTOM LINE
Bugger me; LOVE ACTUALLY is actually fairly good.
LOVE ACTUALLY rating: greenlight
Rose "Bams" Cooper
Webchick and Editor,
3BlackChicks Review
Entertainment Reviews With Flava!
Copyright Rose Cooper, 2003
EMAIL: [email protected]
http://www.3blackchicks.com/
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