Love Actually Stinks
By Kate Brokaw
A&F Associate

The gag reflex sets in early on during Richard Curtis’ new Love Actually, a film that is so overflowing with Christmasttime love that it just ends up feeling like an overstuffed and inedible Thanksgiving turkey. Following over a dozen romantically smitten individuals and their occasionally intercrossing subplots, the film wastes its top-notch cast in increasingly outlandish, often truly insipid feel-good situations. Writer Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill) makes his directorial debut here, and although he wrings the occasional nice moment from his accomplished actors, none of his frantic heartstring-pulling is given enough focus to go beyond a one-note surface level.

The film’s working title,“Love Actually Is All Around,” seems to be Curtis’s filmmaking mantra here, and this idiotic line comes into play in the very first scene, right after an out-of-place observation about heartfelt phone calls from doomed September 11 jet passengers, and a sickeningly kissy-kissy montage of people greeting each other at an airport arrival gate. Love! Sweet, sweet, glorious love! And from that point on, Curtis seems absolutely dead-set on just pummeling his audience with this wondrous conclusion of his, with plot after plot of tossed-off, simplified swooning, all made very pretty by sharp, beautifully filmed locales and a huge cast of should-have-known-better British talent.

The laundry list of stories is endless: Hugh Grant, undoubtedly playing Great Britain’s most attractive prime minister ever, becomes smitten with one of his aides; Alan Rickman tiptoes around a flirtation with his secretary, while his wife (Emma Thompson) slowly becomes aware of his philandering; Liam Neeson grieves his dead wife and gives advice to his lovesick little son; while out at a French villa, a cheated-upon Colin Firth falls for his Portuguese-speaking cleaning lady. What else, you ask? Well, there’s also a bumbling caterer who is set on going to America to get laid, two sex scene stand-ins on a film set making naked small talk, an aged pop star trying to reclaim the love of the country, a sweet guy in love with his best friend’s new wife (Keira Knightley) and, oh yes, Laura Linney is in there somewhere too. She’s also in love. Check. Dammit, love really is all around!

Needless to say, even at an excessive, near two-and-a-half-hour length, all these subplots get juggled in the air at a dizzying rate. There are enough charming little interchanges and moments scattered throughout the film to give Curtis’ directing at least a little credit, but he is just going in too many different directions at once. It’s not that you can’t keep track of the characters– it’s just that they keep getting relegated to the sidelines, with the focus constantly shifting and changing. Connections are hinted upon and quickly dropped, and no one gets enough screen time to create anything beyond that surface level. And no matter how ludicrous, it seems as if the entire cast of characters must be assembled at the same location at the end of the film, as if to show the inescapable connection of all this love. Certainly, it is all very well-meaning, and there are glimpses of something much more bright and witty, but we are never left for too long without another thrown-off cliché of a scene.

It just all seems so constructed, with Curtis trying to create depth in his film merely by touching very superficially upon every major emotional base, whether or not any of those scenes have any depth of their own. When Thompson suddenly breaks down over her marriage, or Neeson starts tearing up over his dead wife, it just has the feeling of a manipulative cheap shot. And what is perhaps most unfortunate is that none of this really has to do with the cast, all of whom are doing their darndest to be charismatic and/or dashing enough to hold up their little inclusion of a subplot. Grant continues his recent run of killer charmers, Thompson’s grounding emotional subtlety is nearly lost in the madness, and Bill Nighy, as the washed-up, go-for-broke pop star, contributes the film’s only healthy dash of holiday cynicism.

But at its worst, Love Actually is also excruciatingly tasteless. A jokey scene about every bar chick in America being a hot and horny sexpot is so extensive that the lack of any “it’s a dream!” follow-up crosses every line of ridiculousness. The outdated cheesy pop hits (pained, lovesick dash from the house: cue Dido!) that litter the soundtrack are cringe-worthy, but the inclusion of a scene from Titanic to teach a lesson about love to Neeson’s wide-eyed tyke is truly inexcusable. (“We need Kate and Leo--and we need them now!” he proclaims.) And interestingly enough, every painfully garish touch is something American.

The film’s ads have it billed as the “Ultimate Romantic Comedy,” but Love Actually is just the ultimate in bad romantic comedy schmaltz, even as its classy actors try to keep up that sharp and attractive appearance. With Curtis unable to focus long enough to come up with anything more than cliché, the film’s perpetual oversimplification is really an insult to its audience. It may be wrapped in pretty paper, but Love Actually is a real holiday fruitcake.