LoveActually

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	Love Actually Dir. Richard Curtis

		I actually love this movie. (That was a pun, or clever play on words. Did you see it? The name of the movie is Love Actually and I said I actually love…..never mind, forget it.) This is a completely wonderful movie. It is also, make no mistake, a complete and utter Chick Flick. (It is such a chick flick that I’ve given it capitals, which is an honor I haven’t bestowed on a movie before now.) It is such a chick flick that two of the men in the movie feel the need, during an emotional crisis, to watch another well-known chick flick and do it unashamedly. See, right there, just the fact that the two men (straight men, by the by) even have an emotional crisis * (see note) is all the proof you need of Chick Flick-iness. The show speeds right up to the too sweet/must have insulin/sugar shock line, but never actually reaches it. All the while you will be laughing. The man who wrote the movie (and directed it) also wrote some Blackadder, Vicar of Dibley, and Mr. Bean scripts. To put it another way, Richard Curtis knows English humor very, very well, and pulls out all the stops to make you laugh until you hurt. For example, there’s the English guy who convinces himself that he would be considered sexy in America, even though he’s a loser in his home country. Off he heads to Wisconsin, with a backpack full of condoms. Parts of that story had me in danger of passing out; I could no longer breathe. The show is broken up into many (6? 7? 12? You lose count after awhile.) stories which are all linked. One story’s central character attends a wedding; the wedding is the main part of another story. It’s like a Robert Altman film, except this one is good. A huge cast of recognizable actors, all in little vignettes that interlink. There’s the story of a writer (Colin Firth) whose housekeeper is in love with him. Neither of them can talk to the other: one speaks only English and the other only Portuguese. There’s the one of the man whose wife has just died (Liam Neeson) who is trying to help his stepson figure out a way to get a girl to notice him. There’s the one where a man with a wonderful wife (Alan Rickman with Emma Thompson) who’s secretary is trying to seduce him. Okay, I didn’t find that story particularly amusing, which helped stop the movie from being too sweet. There’s the one about the new Prime Minister (Hugh Grant) who has to deal with the American president (Billy Bob Thornton.) There’s the American who is in love with an absolutely gorgeous man in her office, but every time she gets anywhere with him her brother interrupts. There’s the one where the new bride (Keira Knightly -- who still looks just like a mix between Natalie Portman and Winonna Ryder) tries to make her new husbands best friend accept her. There’s the guy who goes to America to get laid. Oh, let’s not forget the aging rock star who’s trying to make a comeback by remixing all of his old hits as Christmas songs, which he then touts on the radio as the worst crap on the market. That’s eight, and I know I’ve left at least one out. (It’s too funny to even give you a hint.) It’ll be enough to keep you interested, I guarantee. As always, if you don’t like chick flicks, please don’t go see chick flicks. As wonderful as this movie is, you are not going to like it if you don’t have that particular pleasure center in your brain (or is it in your heart? Could be in your soul I suppose.) Anyway, it is completely wonderful and funny and warm and never too sweet and all other kinds of fuzzy warm things. I rate it: Full Price Bill Nighy as Billy Mack the Rock Star Gregor as Billy Mack’s manager Colin Firth as Jamie the writer Liam Neeson as Daniel the stepfather widower Emma Thomson as Karen who is a wife, a mother, and also the PM’s sister Kris Marshall as the Englishman who goes to Wisconsin Keira Knightly as Juliet Hugh Grant as the Prime Minister Alan Rickman as Harry Rowan Atkinson as Rufus Cameos by all sorts of people, most of them beautiful American women * I am not trying to say that men don’t really have emotional crises -- they do and have every bit as much right to have them as women do. I’m just saying if one is shown in a movie, that movie is going to be a chick flick. No offence was intended, and you know I’m right.

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