160) Love ActuallyDirector: Richard CurtisYear: 2003Plot Summary: Follows the lives of eight very different couples in dealing with their love lives in various loosely and interrelated tales all set during a frantic month before Christmas in London, England.
Love Actually could easily have been a visual supplement with the book 'Screen Writing For Dummies'. By that, I don't mean that Richard Curtis has managed to craft the perfect script in his seasonal romantic comedy. In fact, I mean it more in the sense that any aspiring writer should view this is a guide for to how not to write a script.
Connected through work colleagues, friendships and family members, Love Actually explores the love lives of eight different characters in the build up to Christmas.
Proudly boasting the tagline "The Ultimate Romantic Comedy" I have always been intrigued by the feature. Especially after hearing that a favourite film critic of mine feels that Love Actually is one of the most underrated romance stories of the 21st century and one look at IMDB will show you that it has a high 7.9 rating. But, in fact, Love Actually is a terrible movie.
First of all, eight stories are far too many to allow any viewer to connect with any of the characters. Especially when, in reflection of the whole thing, there are a good number of the segments that have absolutely no need to be there. I challenge anyone to explain the relevance of the pornography shoot relationship, for example, as well as the utterly stupid segment involving a man who goes to America believing women will love him there.
Furthermore, because of having so many stories, a good number of these characters only appear once or twice in the entire two hours. This makes their narratives as predictable as a North Korean election and also doesn't allow any room for their characters to be explored or developed.
The very few that are explored, such as the relationship between Liam Neeson and his son or the god-awful segment with Colin Firth and a foreign women, end up being so sentimental and schmaltzy that you'll spend the entire time cringing. They're completely unrealistic scenarios that play right into the fantasies of lonely, desperate middle-aged women. In other words, Love Actually for the most part, as well as being a supplement for the aforementioned 'Screen Writing For Dummies', could also just be a visual Hallmarks poem.
It doesn't exactly help either when the performances are this bad. There are a few child characters in film and TV that would probably make the narrative better if they were neglected in a basement, but the horrible performance by Neeson's aforementioned son makes Sam one of the worst I've seen. The appearance of Joseph Fritzel wouldn't have been unwelcome by the time he starts to hatch a plan to make his primary school sweetheart love him. Also horrendous is Bill Nighy who is so miscast here as a rock star that he might as well be playing Nelson Mandela.
Curtis becomes so bogged down, moreover, in his ambition of making this a British event that he neglects any resemblance of story. The cameo appearances by Michael Parkinson and Jo Whiley are just plain unnecessary while his humour is so stereotypical that at times it frankly becomes embarrassing.
Sentimental, obvious, awfully written and badly performed, Love Actually is, despite what critics and audiences may tell you, shit actually.
1/5
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