Film Review: Love Actually (2003)

Christmas holidays are a very special time of the year when Christmas-themed films are shown on television or watched by families. Some, like It’s a Wonderful Life, Die Hard, or Home Alone, have established yearly traditions that date back decades. The latest entry to this exclusive club is Love Actually, a 2003 British romantic comedy written and directed by Richard Curtis.

The film is set around Christmas and New Year and doesn’t consist of a classic plot. Instead, it is a series of subplots loosely connected through friendship, professional, or family relationships between various characters. It starts with Billy Mack (played by Bill Nighy), an old washed-up rock star who records a Christmas song hoping that it will become a hit during the season, which serves as part of the film’s soundtrack. Mark (played by Andrew Lincoln) is a young man whose best friend Peter (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) is just about to marry a beautiful woman named Juliet (played by Keira Knightley), with whom he has desperately fallen in love. Harry (played by Alan Rickman) is an agency director whose wife, Karen (played by Emma Thompson), catches him cheating on her with his secretary, Mia (played by Heike Makatsch). One of Harry’s subordinates is a dashing man named Karl (played by Rodrigo Santoro), whose romantic relationship with lonely agency employee Sarah (played by Laura Linney) falls apart because of her need to care for her mentally ill brother, Michael (played by Michael Fitzgerald). Karen’s brother, David (played by Hugh Grant), happens to be the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and he falls in love with his office’s catering manager, Natalie (played by Martine McCutcheon), later catching her in the company of the lecherous US President (played by Billy Bob Thornton) during a state visit. Karen’s friend, Daniel (played by Liam Neeson), has recently lost his wife and tries to comfort his young son, Sam (played by Thomas Sangster), by helping him win the heart of his beautiful schoolmate, Joanna (played by Olivia Olson). Sarah’s friend, Jamie (played by Colin Firth), is a writer who caught his girlfriend cheating and tries to recuperate in Portugal, where he notices a beautiful maid, Aurelia (played by Lucia Muniz), who doesn’t speak English. John (played by Martin Freeman) and Judy (played by Joanna Page) are nude stand-ins for film actors who, despite their lack of shyness in front of the camera, have trouble expressing attraction towards each other in real life. They are directed by Tony (played by Abdul Salis), whose friend Colin (played by Kris Marshall) flies to Milwaukee, hoping to seduce American girls with his “exotic” British accent.

Richard Curtis enjoys a reputation as one of the most successful British filmmakers in the past few decades, most of which was built in the 1990s through a series of immensely popular romantic comedies. Love Actually didn’t break the pattern and became a monster hit, although the critics, at least initially, were noticeably less enthusiastic compared with their reaction to his previous work. This, to a degree, can be explained by Love Actually being a rather unconventional romantic comedy. The most notable difference between it and most other examples of the genre is its anthology-like structure, which is both the film’s blessing and a curse. While Curtis never dwells on a single subplot or character for too long, some of them are less developed than others, resulting in stories of varied quality. This structure also allows Curtis to sneak some serious and, at times, rather dark material into the film, which includes themes of mental illness, marital infidelity, and tragic loss. The scene in which Liam Neeson’s character has to deal with his wife’s death is especially poignant in light of the actor tragically losing his wife in real life a few years later. Another interesting aspect of the film is its lack of family-friendliness. Characters in the film swear a lot, and there is a relatively high amount of nudity, including scenes that feature Laura Linney, a talented but one of the most underused Hollywood actresses, whose appearance in this film, due to her character not being handled properly, will be best remembered for this detail.

The unenthusiastic response among critics was notable from the other side of the Atlantic. This might be explained by the segment dealing with the fictional Prime Minister, which brought political overtones to the film in light of shifting public sentiments towards its real-life counterpart, Tony Blair, during the premiere. Blair, whose government and policies were initially supported by Curtis and many other members of the British cultural establishment, began to be perceived as “Bush’s poodle” due to his enthusiastic participation in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, an event that made previously “cool” Britain responsible for all ensuing apocalyptic destruction and genocidal bloodbath. David, unlike Blair, stands up to the American president, who is portrayed not as the arrogant Bush, but as the lecherous Bill Clinton, a person whom many American critics still worshipped at the time.

In the end, like with most Christmas films, whether someone will enjoy Love Actually or not ultimately depends on the viewer’s mood and willingness to accept outbursts of saccharine-like sentimentality that culminate near the film’s end. Many did enjoy the film, and it gained further life as the source of popular Internet memes, especially those related to the famous cue card scene near the end. The same scene was, among other things, the inspiration for a rather effective political ad by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Tory Party before the 2019 elections.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

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