Love Actually (2003)

Genre

Comedy | Romance

Director

Richard Curtis

Country

UK

Cast

Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Keira Knightley, Colin Firth, Sienna Guillory, Lúcia Moniz, Liam Neeson, Thomas Sangster, Bill Nighy, Gregor Fisher, Martine McCutcheon, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Andrew Lincoln, Laura Linney, Rodrigo Santoro, Michael Fitzgerald, Kris Marshall, Abdul Salis, Heike Makatsch, Martin Freeman, Joanna Page, Olivia Olson, Billy Bob Thornton, Rowan Atkinson, Claudia Schiffer, January Jones, Elisha Cuthbert, Shannon Elizabeth, Denise Richards

Storyline

Christmas time in England, and unusual things going on round. Some people are falling in love, then breaking up or some people just desperately lonely and still looking for that someone special. This is a story about 8 people who follow their hearts and show love or anger. If you look carefully around 'Love Actually' is all around you...

Opinion

All You Need Is Love... and a good script to make a film work, and Love Actually has both: it is certainly not a masterpiece, but it's a quite nice and engaging romantic comedy, perfect for the Christmas time and not.

The film is a series of stories about several people that seemingly have no connection to one another, but eventually turn out to be someway connected. More or less, these stories are close to reality and deals with everyday-life problems such as love, betrayal, and forgiveness, without an excessive load of drama.

As mention before, the script is quite well written, and has a good amount of irony - even though it lacks of British humour, the thing I was hoping for the most. Also, it does have some weak points. Like the Prime Minister's scenes that seem to be written by a kid, and whose dialogue is neither good nor appropriate, especially for a meeting with the Cabinet.

The stellar cast does a good job, but Bill Nighy and Emma Thompson are the highlights. The first brings a breath of fresh air in the character (and film) and the latter is so natural that makes acting seem the easiest thing in the world. It was nice seeing Liam Neeson not playing Liam Neeson for once - and I'll admit I kind of moved -- I repeat, kind of -- when Sam called him 'dad' for the first time. 

Bottom line, I think the film does convey something and remembers us how love love there is around us, and how much love we can give. Basically what every single Christmas song seems to be saying nowadays.