Love Actually

It's great to have friends with such widely varying opinions of films. One friend of mine told me this film was "excruciating" while another said it was "delightful." You can imagine how interested I was in seeing it. And, oddly enough, it has elements of both, although there aren't actually any excruciating scenes, just ones that ring false. For instance, the supposition that Wisconsin is peopled by gorgeous babes who dig English guys and just want to have sex with them all the time is slightly appalling to this midwesterner. Ditto that a small boy could evade airport security and make his way all the way to the gate without a boarding pass. Come to think of it, that's not just appalling, that's downright scary. But I don't want to give the wrong impression. It's a lovely film about love -- any and all kinds of love (marital, falling-in-, forbidden, sibling, you name it). Each pair has their own story, and yet they interweave throughout the film (albeit a bit complicatedly). My faves were Laura Linney (heartbreaking tale, and who is this incredible Rodrigo Santoro?!), Keira Knightley (and the ever so rightly cast Andrew Lincoln) and Colin Firth (up until the preposterous restaurant proposal and the fact that he's embarrassingly bad at on-screen kissing). And I can't close without mentioning the scene in which Hugh Grant dances his way through 10 Downing Street, well worth the price of admission alone.

year: 2003
length: 135 min.
rating: 3.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0314331/combined