Love Actually (film)
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| Director(s) | Richard Curtis |
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| Distributor | Universal Studios |
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| With no fewer than eight couples vying for our attention, Love Actually is like the Boston Marathon of romantic comedies, and everybody wins. Having mastered the genre as the writer of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Bridget Jones’s Diary, it appears that first-time director Richard Curtis is just like his screenplays: He just wants to be loved, and he’ll go to absurdly appealing lengths to win our affection. With Love Actually, Curtis orchestrates a minor miracle of romantic choreography, guiding a brilliant cast… | |
Honors
Reviews
Amazon.com
With no fewer than eight couples vying for our attention, Love Actually is like the Boston Marathon of romantic comedies, and everybody wins. Having mastered the genre as the writer of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Bridget Jones’s Diary, it appears that first-time director Richard Curtis is just like his screenplays: He just wants to be loved, and he’ll go to absurdly appealing lengths to win our affection. With Love Actually, Curtis orchestrates a minor miracle of romantic choreography, guiding a brilliant cast of stars and newcomers as they careen toward love and holiday cheer in London, among them the Prime Minister (Hugh Grant) who’s smitten with his caterer; a widower (Liam Neeson) whose young son nurses the ultimate schoolboy crush; a writer (Colin Firth) who falls for his Portuguese housekeeper; a devoted wife and mother (Emma Thompson) coping with her potentially unfaithful husband (Alan Rickman); and a lovelorn American (Laura Linney) who’s desperately attracted to a colleague. There’s more—too much more—as Curtis wraps his Christmas gift with enough happy endings to sweeten a dozen other movies. That he pulls it off so entertainingly is undeniably impressive; that he does it so shamelessly suggests that his writing fares better with other, less ingratiating directors. —Jeff Shannon
Barnes and Noble
It’s not easy to craft romantic comedies with ensemble casts, and few filmmakers have done so as well as screenwriter Richard Curtis, whose credits include Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Bridget Jones’s Diary. For Love Actually, his directorial debut, he has composed a comedy of symphonic proportions, a surprisingly sprightly romp that boasts a dizzying array of characters connected in unpredictable ways. The story is set in London during Christmas, as the newly elected prime minister (Hugh Grant) takes office and immediately falls for a working-class staffer (Martine McCutcheon). Meanwhile, his middle-aged sister (Emma Thompson) is beginning to worry that her husband (Alan Rickman) might succumb to the blandishments of a sexually aggressive coworker, while elsewhere in the office Laura Linney pines for hunky Rodrigo Santoro. On other fronts, a recently minted widower (Liam Neeson) struggles to raise his adolescent stepson, and Colin Firth rebounds from heartbreak by falling for his non-English-speaking assistant. Stringing the whole thing together is the film’s best story line, which involves an aging, dissipated rocker (Bill Nighy) who records a corny Christmas song that becomes an unexpected holiday hit. As one expects with Curtis, the script is fairly literate and refreshingly free of tacky humor. Which is not to say that Love Actually doesn’t have its ribald moments; in fact, it’s probably the lustiest picture Curtis has done to date. Still the characters are generally likable and the movie brims with wonderful bits: Rowan Atkinson, for instance, contributes a quietly hysterical turn as a prissy department-store clerk. In the vast rough of romantic comedies, Love Actually is a genuinely witty and enchanting diamond. Ed Hulse
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Love Actually: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Noted English screenwriter Richard Curtis makes his directorial bow with this romantic comedy that follows the dizzying foibles of no less than a dozen couples, featuring a cast that includes Hugh Grant as a bachelor British PM and Billy Bob Thornton as a disturbing hybrid of the worst of Clinton and Bush. Seemingly taking its lead from Bridget Jones’s Diary and its sequel (both of which Curtis also wrote), Love’s rich, eclectic collection of pop songs becomes something more than mere movie-soundtrack wallpaper. Indeed, tracks as disparate as Joni…
