CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Dotbankey A lot of fun.

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

b-95167 Love karel knightley,especially her performance and the way that director made up the film

eric262003 Due to his stature as the icon for British culture, complete with with aristocratic accents, and an immaculate view of upper-class London, writer/director Richard Curtis truly has the substance factor in his favour. However in his holiday season themed film "Love Actually", he throws all that posh out the window in resorts to sentimental gush, saccharine music and indecorous humour. This is a far cry from "Four Weddings and a Funeral".It's great that Curtis called up his partner in crime Hugh Grant to be one of the stars in "Love Actually", but he's been rendered down to a small supporting role and is lost in the crowd to the over-stacked ensemble cast. Grant plays the part of David, who's been a newly elected British Prime Minister, his comical moments truly usurps the other who's who in this ultra-British cast that includes Emma Thompson, Bill Nighy and Alan Rickman. In his witty and subtle demeanour, Grant has become a stapled icon in the romantic comedy genre and can generate a lot of humourous moments with his twitches and in this instant, the shake of his tush.A character break into dance mode has become common in romantic comedies, but Grant conveys a new and eccentric twist to what is an awkward predicament. When he was dancing to The Pointer Sisters' "Jump (For My Love)" we can see how embarrassed he his doing it, but his sportsmanship is something we can applaud to. With all these intertwining subplots, the one that's barely given screen time involves around Prime Minister David as he's mitten over his ravishing assistant Natalie (Martine McCutcheon). The chemistry between the sophisticated Prime Minister and the slightly lower class help is the one that sparked my interest the most. McCutcheon even adds an original twist to her character by breaking the cliche of the cute newly in love assistant by unceremoniously swearing at her superior.The opening scenes centres around the week before the holiday season as the ever-present variation of a Mod rock song "Love is All Around" with a hint of holiday cheer is rubbed into our faces. Yes the British love their pop music and Curtis is not ashamed to exploit that to us. He did a similar thing in "Four Wedding and Funeral" with "Bye Bye Baby" by the Bay City Rollers. This eye-roller sets the tone of many absurd things to come.With a myriad of romantic subplots, they could all stretch to half an hour segments before we see them one more time. Sadly, not all of them were not given enough time and could've easily been edited out. One example would be the body doubles John and Judy (Martin Freeman and Johanna Page) who are dating quietly while giving fake orgies on the movie sets. Or the story involving a hopeless romantic named Colin (Kris Marshall) who travels to America to use his British accent to woo hot women, which to me felt like an overlong coke commercial. Still most of the stories work due to the talent pool and the good vibes it brings to the story.Liam Neeson is wonderful as a widowed man named Daniel who's 11 year old stepson Sam (Thomas Sangster) seeks his first crush, an American girl named Joanna (Olivia Olson). Sangster conveys a daring and dashing presence of energy in his character, but his drive feels too young and forced for his age. However, his comic skills when he meets his dreamboat for the first time is flawless.Colin Firth plays a sympathetic note here as Jamie who after feeling betrayed by his girlfriend (Sienna Guillory) hides out to his French cottage and gets love-struck by his Portuguese maid Aurelia (Lucia Moniz) though they can't speak each other's language, the magic comes from the fact that the language of love bears no boundaries. Moniz embodies a keen sense of intelligence and seductiveness to her character. Both Moniz and McCutcheon are more interesting performers than the more established ones here. Emma Thompson's housewife Karen believes that her husband Harry (Alan Rickman) is secretly having an affair with his sultry receptionist, Mia (Heike Makatsch). Thompson and Rickman's talents are badly wasted here and their cliched ways proves the point here. The love between each other makes it hard to believe that Harry is a cheater and when Karen who was expecting an expensive necklace from Harry as a Christmas gift only to realize that the gift was not for her (her's was a Joni Mitchell CD) we get the music score running with Mitchell's weary version of "Both Sides Now". The song was nice I felt bad for Karen, but it still was drained out.Laura Linney plays Sarah, who works at Harry's company and is attracted to her co-worker Karl (Rodrigo Santoro), but the relationship is set back due to her mentally ill brother, Michael (Michael Fitzgerald). Sure Curtis like to include somber pieces to his agenda, but the thing that transpire in this subplot results in strange and jarring moments. Bill Nighy has equal comical moments as Grant playing a has-been rock star knows his best years are behind him, but still has some optimism that his awful holiday song might be the keys to comeback and promotes this song at a gala event hosted by Sir Elton John. While he and his partner Joe (Gregor Fisher) spend the holidays inebriated and watching porn.Yes the British strive to get a #1 single has been a tradition since the 1960's which has a community feeling in the UK than it does in America. Sure the cost of oneness is expensive, especially having to deal with saccharine music.

TownRootGuy This is another on my list of movies I'd give an 11 if I could. It has an awesome cast, fantastic eye candy, naked eye candy, excellent music AND the funny is all around it, it's everywhere you look. There is nothing about this movie that isn't outstanding. I can still watch this every year. It is a must see movie.

Jared_Andrews Love Actually is a lot like actual love---it's wonderful until it isn't. Then everything blows up, leaving you to pick up the pieces of your devastated reality.Relax. I'm only kidding. Love really is wonderful, even the struggles. The movie Love Actually, not so much.The first 30 minutes or so are downright hilarious, featuring a mix of charming British humor and broader appeal jokes as well. The setup of each storyline features likable characters in relatable situations. You root for everything to work out. You want all of them to be happy.Then, through no fault of the characters, you change your attitude. Instead of rooting for the characters, you become apathetic, at best. Why? Because the movie makes every story nauseating with irritatingly manipulative music, cuts to closeups of hopeful or gleeful faces to force viewers to elicit the "hooray" emotions. It's all very painful and frustrating.The movie is called Love Actually (which is a great title, by the way), but so little of what occurs in the movie can be passed off as something that would actually happen. A more appropriate title would be Love Fantasy.Thirty minutes into the movie (again, the beginning shows promise and is mostly delightful), all the believable buildups have morphed into shameless fairy tale-like sequences. It's all a bunch of love at first sight silliness. Sorry if this sounds too harsh, but there is no love at first sight. The very concept is shallow and supposes a fundamental misunderstanding of what love is. There can be attraction at first sight, or lust at first sight. But not love.The most ghastly instance of using music to manipulate the viewers comes during a scene when two people, who have never spoken a word to each other because they don't speak the same language, develop feelings for each other. That is an interesting idea that could have been quite moving if handled deftly. Instead, the moment is a bit more blunt. The music indicates that the man develops loving feelings for the woman when she takes off all her clothes to jump in a lake. Viewers are led to believe that the man felt little for this woman until he saw that she looked good in her underwear, after which he fell in love with her.So, I guess the message is that you can love someone that you've never spoken to as long and the other person is attractive. It's basically a different version of that thing in movies when the dorky girl takes off her glasses then everyone realizes that she's beautiful and then the main guy character can love her now. The biggest difference between those two cases is that the dorky girl removing her glasses moment usually happens in a movie that clearly isn't taking itself too seriously, whereas Love Actually is posing as a movie that represents realistic love. That's sad to me because many viewers, especially the impressionable young ones, may walk away from this movie confusing attraction for love.Since I'm unleashing all my gripes with this movie, I may as well mention one more. This one didn't so much make me mad, as much as it confused me. It is also kind of funny in a way. I'm talking about the portrayal of the U.S. President (the movie takes place in England). It casts him as this arrogant, smug, woman harassing pig. Basically, he's a bully. So, when one of the British characters stands up to him, the music swoons once again, indicating to the audience that they should be happy that the American jerk couldn't push people around anymore.To be honest, I have no idea if this is the perception that people in England have of Americans. Perhaps it is, and the viewers from England really did applaud this moment. But I personally found it all to be laughably cheesy.That's a pretty accurate summary of my take on the movie overall---laughably cheesy. I'll just leave it at that. I recommend that you take a hard pass on Love Actually.