Richard Curtis, making his debut as a director, tries to cover every possible version of romantic comedy in his film Love Actually. On the whole, he isn't altogether too successful. Throwing in as many respected British actors as possible (and Martine McCutcheon), Curtis' goal is clearly to drown us in charming humour until we like the movie. But he never really comes close to winning the audience over. While there are bright spots in the film, they are marred by a swamp of cliches and extreme overlength. Probably the best performance is from Emma Thompson--her strand, involving a typically grumpy Alan Rickman as her husband, tempted by a younger woman, is the best written and reminds us what a great actress she really is. Another standout is the great Bill Nighy hamming it up as an aged rockstar aiming for a big comeback. But, as engaging as these stories are, they are ruined by the continual switches to other far less interesting strands. Some are so pointless and uninvolving you wonder how they made it into the film (Keira Knightley's section particularly comes to mind), while others show a little potential but are let down by an at times awful script (especially apparent in Laura Linney's storyline). Pros like Colin Firth and Hugh Grant seem to be sleepwalking through their segments, and Rowan Atkinson's obligatory cameo is so dreadfully unfunny it makes the mind boggle.
The film (very slowly) builds to a big set of conclusions on Christmas Eve, with people taking off after their lovers and an awful lot of story threads being tied up at Heathrow Airport. Curtis continually shoves big romantic endings in our face, hoping that ten big resolutions instead of the traditional one will have us gushing with happiness. He doesn't succeed. Mostly, due to the choppiness of the film you really don't care much for a lot of the characters, which really is the major problem of the film. There's some good material here: along with Nighy and Thompson, Liam Neeson shows good chemistry with his onscreen son and Kris Marshall's escapade to America is brief and enjoyable. But anything good is inevitably mixed in with all the bad, and so the little quality that does exist is mostly lost. Some fairly judicious editing and the wholesale dropping of some of the storylines would have led to a big improvement in quality. As it stands, Love Actually is quite a big disappointment.
**