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Overall Rating
 Awesome: 30.6%
Worth A Look: 47.76%
Average: 8.96%
Pretty Bad: 7.46%
Total Crap: 5.22%
8 reviews, 86 user ratings
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| Love Actually |
by The Ultimate Dancing Machine
"Pretty good, actually"

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Arriving in U.S. theatres a little too early to capitalize properly on its Christmas theme, the U.K. production LOVE ACTUALLY is such a witty, pleasant film that it's easy to forgive it for being essentially NASHVILLE lite. That is, NASHVILLE transported to England, given a rom-com gloss, and lacking that unsightly Altmanesque satire. It even has a recording-studio scene over the opening credits. Coincidence? Probably not, I'd think.All this has the unfortunate effect of reminding you how good NASHVILLE really was--LOVE ACTUALLY can't quite compare. But who cares? Considered on its own terms, the film brings along enough brisk comic invention to make it worth your time.
It's a rich movie that feels long but not overlong; writer-director Richard Curtis (screenwriter of BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY and various Rowan Atkinson projects) successfully juggles an imposingly large cast--and pumps uniformly decent performances out of all. He follows over a half-dozen prospective couples, their orbits crossing periodically, in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Participants in this cinematic roundelay include Hugh Grant (as, of all things, a lovestruck Prime Minister), Colin Firth (lonely novelist), Bill Nighy (aging twitchy rock star), Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson, Laura Linney, and about a dozen others I don't feel like mentioning.
If you're thinking that most of these guys are gonna get together at the end, you are of course right, but the trip to that predictable ending is often clever. Curtis has a natural comedic flair. He doesn't often go for the belly laugh, but he's good at those tiny, incidental inventions that produce "charming" films.
And so the movie has an unforced sweetness about it. It's enough to overcome Curtis' occasional tendency toward cliche and the plain old bad idea, as in that bit where Grant suddenly breaks into dance a la RISKY BUSINESS. Also, why does every ensemble piece like this have to include a DJ whose running commentary is supposed to give the film cohesiveness?
But LOVE ACTUALLY is, overall, a good holiday film that luckily doesn't condescend to teach us the true meaning of Christmas or anything quite so obvious. The film is too honest for that.It doesn't lack for sentimentality, and in a few spots comes perilously close to 200-proof schmaltz; but in the last it contains more truth--about relationships, how they come together and fall apart--than your average Hollywood product.
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link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=8297&reviewer=223 originally posted: 11/04/03 19:23:12
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USA 07-Nov-2003 (R) DVD: 27-Apr-2004
UK N/A
Australia 26-Dec-2003
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