Love Actually

Written and Directed by: Richard Curtis

I'm a bit behind on my blogging, so I'm only now getting to a film I saw in the days leading up to Christmas.

To start, I'm not a fan of movies with huge ensemble casts featuring piles of mega-stars. Most of the time they end up being incredibly massive puddles of puke. Typically, they pull their actors from as many different age and interest groups so as to attract the biggest audience as possible, while simultaneously watering down the plot and removing any drama to make sure that not a single person in the audience is offended or turned-off. (See: "Valentine's Day" and "New Years's Day.)

But, Richard Curtis's "Love Actually" is different. From the first time I saw it, it exceeded my wildest expectations and has now become annual viewing during the Christmas season.

There are too many different plots interwoven together for me to bother breaking down here. Suffice to say that all of them touch on the topic of love, although from many different aspects and angles. Present at different times throughout the movie are newfound love, unrequited love, love as inspiration, fading love, brotherly love, love for family, love across language barriers, and even youthful lust.

What makes "Love Actually" a great movie is that it somehow convinces you to like and care about all the characters. The characters are sincere and feel real, even if they are not necessarily believable. (Hugh Grant as the Prime Minister of England? No way!) The audience is drawn in to each character's desires.

The film also manages to avoid being overly dramatic, though one or two of the plots have some rather dramatic elements. Too often in these types of films, "plot" is confused with "life-changing drama," which can diminish a film if the card is played too often. Instead, "Love Actually" keeps the various plots fresh and moves them forward through smaller encounters and incidents. It was also nice to see how the different stories were woven together

I do have to say that the film does have some drawbacks. About 95% of the film is family-friendly, there is one story line which features nudity and pornography as a prominent element (though, to be fair, it is not pornographic in its essence). With so many plot-lines, a few of the good ones get relegated to secondary status or disappear from the film completely for a while.

Overall, though, it's a fun film, and it succeeds where other films of its type often fail.