Review: Love Actually

#141 - Love Actually

Love Actually is an adorable romantic comedy intersecting several people's love lives into one story. It deals with the ups and downs of love, and how some people find their happy endings, while others do not.

Let me just get this out of the way:

This is the moral of the entire film...

Like no joke. There are like 9 or 10 different stories all wound into one large plot: "Love actually is all around." Some of the stories end happily and the others do not. Some work out easily and, again, others do not. It's the way of the world, and that's what I love about this film. It really hits the reality of what it's like to be in love or search for love - from a young age to your senior years. The characters span from an innocent child to a busted up old rock star. It's truly phenomenal to watch all of the stories weave together in the end. It's writing at an incredibly genius level. It's great.

The only criticism I have for the film is the American story. This guy, Colin, thinks that he's not getting a girlfriend because he needs to go to America. He is convinced that he will find hot women in some random bar in the middle of nowhere. Out of all the places in America to fly to, he chooses Wisconsin. Like WTF? It's funny when you really think about it, because seriously what are the chances of him finding a mega hot woman to have sex with him in the middle of Wisconsin...but he does. He finds four women at the bar, and two more women later (whom he brings back to England with him). The casting is awful for the American women. It actually ruins sections of the movie when they're on screen. I really wish that the writers/director would've chosen to just cut out the America story line completely. It really had no relevance at all with everything else that was happening in the movie. When Shannon Elizabeth and Denise Richards show up at the airport at the very end with those god awful Southern accents, I want to shoot myself. He was in Wisconsin. Why the heck do they have such deep Southern accents? It makes no sense at all. It's a British romantic comedy...keep it British, thank you very much.

Overall, I love this movie, and it is one that I watch every single Christmas. It has Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, and Martin freaking Freeman in it. What's not to love?

I give Love Actually 4.5 out of 5 stars.