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| 12/17/2003 |
| Love Actually: Is in My Pants |
by Wes Bennett
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“Love Actually” is a charming but uneven film is about love in it’s many forms and guises. Writer-director Richard Curtis (“Notting Hill” and “The Diary of Bridget Jones”) presents us with an overall optimistic message: that love is actually all around us. He believes that although love can ultimately redeem us, it turns us into blithering idiots and doesn’t always end happily.
“Love” jumps around a number of loosely connected characters in London, over a two-month period before Christmas. Hugh Grant is a self-deprecating, bachelor prime minister who falls in love with his foul-mouthed secretary. His sister, Emma Thompson thinks she’s happily married, but her husband, Alan Rickman is edging toward an affair with a sexy coworker. Yet another coworker, Laura Linney, is an American expatriate whose romantic life has been ruined by the responsibility she feels for her mentally handicapped brother. One of Emma Thompson’s friends, Liam Neeson is a recent widower, working through his grief by assisting the love life of his preteen step son.
The story also features Colin Firth as an author who falls for his Portuguese maid (Lucia Moniz) while writing in the French countryside. Andrew Lincoln as a young man who is secretly in love with the beautiful wife (Keira Knightley) of his best friend.
Kris Marshall is an English loser trying to get to America, where he's sure his British accent will help him pick up chicks. Martin Freeman and Joanna Page are a young couple who fall in love while working as stand-ins in a porn movie. Rounding out the cast is Bill Nighy as an aged bad-boy rocker on the comeback trail with a dreadful holiday version of his old hit “Love Is All Around.”
The film is filled with witty dialogue and some very enjoyable moments. Nearly every scene with Hugh Grant is great. He proves himself a master at reacting to awkward situations while projecting his patented self-effacing charm. His story line is the one that comes closest to the classic romantic comedy formula.
Confronting the possibility of her husband's infidelity on a snowy Christmas morning, provides Thompson with a great scene where she squeezes disbelief, anger, and deep, deep sorrow into the space of a few seconds and then rejoins her family after regaining her composure. Neeson’s is very solid as a Father who tries to forget his grief by living through his step son’s quest. This culminates in an exciting sequence in which he masterminds his step son’s mad dash through an airport.
What severely weakens the film is the lesser story lines such as the stand-ins whose only purpose was to provide a cheap sight gag. Even worse was the Englishman who picks up American girls in a Wisconsin bar. This scene was not only stupid, it threatened to undermine the entire tone of the film by pushing it into the territory of farce.
The problem with “Love Actually”, as is often the case with large ensembles, is that we don't spend nearly enough time with the interesting characters. As a result we feel torn away from some of the stories and forced to return to others that we don’t like as much. One can’t help but think that Curtis could have easily crafted a stronger package by excising the weaker plot lines.
Even though I admire the refreshing realism of “Bad Santa” that represented people that don’t enjoy the holidays that much and the film felt a little too fragmented, it did contains enough clever dialogue and sexy moments to distract from it’s weaknesses. “Love” has proven to be extremely appealing to audiences who enjoy romantic comedies because of the fine cast and general goodwill of the picture. |
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| "We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then question the manner in which I provide it." |
- Jack Nicholson
A Few Good Men
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Distributed Beers
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| 5 |
Sierra Nevada Bigfoot |
| 4 |
Guinness Draught |
| 3 |
Newcastle Brown Ale |
| 2 |
Bass Pale Ale |
| 1 |
Samuel Adams Boston Lager |
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