My first review for this venerable site was over five years ago, when I covered the now largely forgotten low point of Danny Boyle’s career, Yesterday, including the following: “I only realized after suffering through two hours of this dreck that its writer also scripted and directed Love Actually. Even without that foreknowledge, I should have known. Yesterday felt like nothing more than a rejected plot line from that heinous Christmas schmaltz-fest painfully dragged out to feature length. Yes, this was a script not good enough to be a 20-minute segment in one of the most maudlin, awful romantic comedies ever made… so they made it into its own feature instead!”
I have not revisited Yesterday, but Love Actually, largely by virtue of being a Christmas movie, continues to plague me. There’s usually a girlfriend involved, you see. The first time I sat through this cinematic atrocity was shortly after enduring the 2004 Phantom of the Opera and being berated for dozing off early and often during it. [Editor’s note: For a genuine Phantom of the Opera production, check this review]
What can I say? I was tired, and it was boring. To quote Dwight Schrute (speaking about Sweeney Todd, but it still applies), “All that singing got in the way of some perfectly good murders.” So I was pleasantly surprised by Love Actually, another favorite of said berating girlfriend. Many years and several girlfriends later, I was reminded it is a Christmas movie and decided to revisit it solo. Big mistake.
This is a movie that gets worse with every viewing, made even more disappointing by the potential that can be glimpsed in its stellar cast and few decent storylines. We’ll start with those; I would call it a praise sandwich, but I’ve already led with “cinematic atrocity,” so maybe the praise is the meat in the middle in this case. Probably the best of the actually decent storylines is that of aging rock star Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) and his manager Joe (Gregor Fisher), mainly because Nighy is a cantankerous delight with pretty much all the really funny lines in the movie. The platonic love between the two is genuinely affecting, and the movie overall is often at its best when exploring this type of love, as opposed to the predominantly romantic stuff.
The most moving of the few more serious dramatic storylines is the story of Sarah (Laura Linney) and her mentally ill brother, Michael (Michael Fitzgerald), her devotion to whom prevents Sarah from hooking up with her hot co-worker, Karl (Rodrigo Santoro). As always, Linney is excellent and one can imagine a much better movie all about these characters, perhaps with Linney’s You Can Count On Me director Kenneth Lonergan at the helm. Likewise, the other most serious story, in which Harry (Alan Rickman) is foolishly distracted from his loving wife, Karen (Emma Thompson), by his much younger secretary, Mia (Heike Makatsch), who, it should be noted, is absolutely throwing it at him.
Despite the rather clichéd setup, this one works because of its two powerhouse leads, plus a delightful cameo from Rowan Atkinson and, of course, the thoroughly sexy secretary making Harry’s dilemma all understandable and stuff. Still, it is distracting to see Rickman in a Christmas movie that just reminds you of the much better one you could be watching, as does a brief appearance from Billy Bob Thornton in another storyline. You’re better than this, Hans and Willie!
Hugh Grant does his best to charm his way through his storyline, in which his Prime Minister David woos an underling named Natalie (Martine McCutcheon), and the results are tolerable, but this segment is mostly notable to me for the aforementioned Billy Bob cameo and the way everyone just sort of casually fat-shames Natalie throughout, despite her being an objectively fit and attractive woman. The story of John and Judy (Martin Freeman and Joanna Page, respectively), the two movie stand-ins who meet via simulated sex scenes and initiate an incongruously shy courtship, is charming due to the performances but really one-note, the only joke being that they met doing simulated sex scenes and their courtship is incongruously timid.
Speaking of one-note, get a load of this bit where Colin Firth and his Portuguese housekeeper (Lucia Moniz) fall in love despite not speaking the same language! See, the joke is that they’re always saying the same things, just each in their own language, without ever understanding each other. Isn’t that hilarious? No? Mildly amusing at best, you say. Well, what if the point was that they understood each other perfectly all along… with their hearts? That do it for ya? Still no. Well, hopefully you’ll be suitably charmed by good old Colin Firth, the most average-looking dude to ever become a sex symbol. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a very good actor, but the thirst surrounding him… I just don’t get it.
The story of widower Daniel (Liam Neeson) and his stepson, Sam (Thomas Sangster), mainly coasts on the charm of cute kids, and seems to get a pass from the movie’s fans despite its relentless implausibilities, such as the final act’s run past airport security, which was of course famously lax in the next few years after 2001, or Daniel’s stated desire to date Claudia Schiffer, who then appears at the end as the mother of one of Sam’s classmates. Like, what the hell is even going on there? Is that Claudia Schiffer or just a woman who looks exactly like her, because her name is Carol but… that’s Claudia Schiffer, who also exists in this universe because Daniel mentions more than once that he wants to date Claudia Schiffer, but… I guess it’s just a Christmas miracle, which is a handy way to explain away many of this movie’s failings.
Even fans of this sugary sludge acknowledge the creepiness of and questions raised by the infamous scene in which Mark (Andrew Lincoln) surreptitiously confesses his secret love to Juliet (Keira Knightley) using cue cards and a recording of a choir while her husband (and Mark’s supposed best friend), Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor), obliviously watches television inside. What if Peter had answered the door instead? Even worse, what if he had come to the door at some point during the epic display of stupidity? What if Juliet had responded with horror, dismay, or any other understandable reaction, instead of the way she does? Sure would cast a pall over that friendship for the rest of their lives. It’s a very silly plan that should have gone awry in a plethora of different ways, but again, Christmas miracle, I guess.
Worst of all is the story of Colin (Kris Marshall), a British bloke who bets his mate, Tony (Abdul Salis), that the simple fact he is British will have him swimming in American pussy if he visits the United States at Christmastime. Sure enough, when he lands in Milwaukee of all places, he almost immediately meets three of the most improbably attractive women imaginable (Ivana Milicevic, January Jones, and Elisha Cuthbert) in a bar, and they swoon over his accent and invite him to stay at their place, where a fourth roommate (who they proclaim the sexiest one of all, a claim bolstered by the fact she is played by Shannon Elizabeth) waits to join them in fucking his brains out.
This egregious storyline was clearly written (with one hand, if ya know what I mean) by a middle-aged British screenwriter who would undoubtedly insist on how autobiographical it is if you fed him a few drinks and pretended to believe him. This storyline should be taken out behind a barn and put out of my misery.
The biggest problem with Love Actually is that even its good-to-decent storylines (remember those, from hundreds of words ago?) are continuously juxtaposed with its worst, which dilutes a lot of the emotional resonance from them in spite of top-tier performances from some really great actors. That and the Colin story—it really is some of the cringiest shit I’ve ever seen. Nothing to be done about it, though; if you have a girlfriend, odds are you’re gonna have to watch this movie again. If not this year, then next. Love Actually awaits us all, so you might as well face it with your head held high, and preferably a bellyful of liquor. Bad movies usually go down better with a bellyful of liquor.
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