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Love Actually
(Reviewed November 13, 2003)
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The odd paradox about this movie is that it is likeable enough but not really very good. In fact, parts of it are just plain lousy...and nearly every funny line is groaningly predictable...but you'll still come
out of the theatre with generally warm feelings toward the thing. Weird.
My favorite scene has next to nothing to do with love, actually, but is more uplifting than any of the film's nine sweet-and-sour subplots combined. It occurs when Hugh Grant, as the British
prime minister, publicly stands up to the president of the United States (well played by Billy Bob Thornton as an oily amalgam of Clinton's lechery and Bush's evil arrogance). In other words, Grant
displays the sort of integrity, self-respect, honesty and decency that is so obviously lacking in the character of real-world British PM Tony Blair, a toadying, bootlicking, ass-kissing disgrace to his nation.
Honest to God, that lying little warmonger lapdog is almost more despicable than George W. Bush himself, to whose anus Blair's tongue seems permanently affixed. Bush's psychotic, murderous,
fascistic belligerence can at least partially be blamed on malleable stupidity. Blair, on the other hand, appears bright enough to be fully aware that his pro-war policies are utterly wrong and indefensible, but
adamantly refuses to stop playing the obsequious Smithers to Bush's monstrous Montgomery Burns.
Ahem.
Getting back to those nine subplots, herewith is a rundown:
The Prime Minister and the Secretary: He's Hugh Grant, doing his usual charmingly boyish Hugh Grant thing, which is always enjoyable even in absolute bombs like "Two Weeks Notice."
She's a salty-tongued salt-of-the-earth brunette babe (Martine McCutcheon) who could only be considered "heavy" in the movies. (When she says her last boyfriend left her because her thighs were the size
of tree trunks, every normal-weight woman in the audience probably felt like killing herself.) Grant bends her over his 10 Downing Street desk, tears off her tight miniskirt with his teeth, and savagely
rapes her with a bronze replica of Nelson's Column. No, not really. Had you going there for a minute, though, didn't I?
The Stepdad and Stepson: Liam Neeson is okay (although I can't really imagine a bereaved husband even jokingly referring to his just-lost-his-mom stepson as a "motherless bastard"). The kid
(Thomas Sangster) is great, though. That's "great" as in "nothing like those cloying and talentless Hollywood kids to whom we are so unfortunately accustomed." He's funny and likeably serious. Also, he
does something in an airport with a lack of consequences that would be utterly preposterous in our real-life, paranoid, post-9/11 world. At first the scene seems wrongheaded, but the more I thought about
it the more I liked it. Just as "Love Actually" takes place in a universe where the British PM has a spine, maybe it also is a universe where Big Brother is still a fictional entity.
The Writer and the Housekeeper: Yet another "love among the wealthy" subplot, in which cuckolded Colin Firth flies off to a simply lovely cottage in Provence to write a novel. There he is
smitten by his smolderingly sexy Portuguese housekeeper (Lucia Moniz), a mouthwatering knockout who speakas no Engliz. Personally, I hope that when I write my next novel I'm blessed with an
adoring sexpot servant who will whip off her dress and dive into a pond to retrieve any of my manuscript pages that blow there, as Moniz does in this movie. Maybe that should be in the job description.
The Frump and the Adonis: I didn't buy for a second the premise that mousey desk jockey Laura Linney would hold any appeal whatsoever for a coworker (whose name I forget) who is so
good-looking he could be an underwear model. This subplot gets even stupider when Linney interrupts their never-would-happen getting-it-on session later to take calls from an institutionalized brother
(who apparently has incredibly liberal cell-phone privileges). Beyond dumb.
The Husband, the Wife and the Other Woman: Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson are fine as a used-to-each-other older married couple. One of his underlings at work wants some of his man
meat. Will he stray, even though she looks like a vampire who's a quart low? Or will he stay true to the middle-aged mother of his children? I won't blow it for you, but this subplot comes the closest to
something resembling interactions that could occur between real human beings.
The Rock Star and the Manager: My favorite subplot by far. Bill Nighy is flat-out excellent as a past-his-prime rocker who is cheerfully honest about selling out by recording a sappy Christmas
single. Genuinely funny.
The Best Man and the Happy Couple. God, this one was bad. Really, really bad. Keira Knightley is radiant as a newlywed bride, Chiwetel Ejiofor (from "Dirty Pretty Things") is kind of wasted
as her hubby, and Andrew Lincoln is saddled with the role of their best man who Has A Secret. The outcome is just embarrassingly, moronically saccharine. Hated it.
The Jerk Who Wants to Get Off: Hated this one even more, about an obnoxiously dumb Gary Busey lookalike who thinks he will find poon paradise in America. This crude sex-farce silliness is
about as out of place as a tit shot in "Mary Poppins."
The Stand-Ins: A guy and gal meet while doing nude sex-scene stand-in work for movie actors who never are seen. Much as I enjoy the sight of naked female flesh, this storyline is just
insultingly stupid, besides being less substantial that your typical Benny Hill skit. You don't have to be a Hollywood insider to know that no non-porn movie would have as many nude sex scenes as the
one we are supposed to believe is being filmed here...and God knows that no porn movie has a budget to afford these crew members. So what we are left with is a damned flimsy excuse to show a little
simulated sex between a wimpy schlub of a guy and a pretty cute blond. Like I said, I know I should enjoy seeing the blond's T&A, but this story was as out of place in the movie as the vulgar "Jerk Who
Wants to Get Off" subplot. Writer/director Richard Curtis should have cut both of these scenes (and a few scattered four-letter words) to get a "PG-13" rating instead of an "R," which would have added
tens of millions of dollars to the movie's box-office. I mean, we ain't talking "art film" here, so it is not as if the movie's "integrity" would have been ruined by rendering it watchable for young teenage
girls (who probably would be the main demographic to enjoy it, yet who won't be able to buy tickets because of that "R").
The roundaboutly-arrived-at point of this wishy-washy review is that there is stuff here to like and dislike, but there is so much stuff overall (the movie is more than two hours long) that you are
pretty much assured of finding somebody or something in it to float your little blue-or-pink-sailed romantic boat.
Back Row Grade: C
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