I have made my love for the holiday season no secret. I have all my annual traditions, Christmas lights strung up around my workspace, sitting by the Christmas tree with hot chocolate and a book in hand, drinking a little too much spiked eggnog, taking my dog Hazel for our daily run while sporting a Colts Santa hat telling everyone we see "Merry Christmas," and of course, marathoning all of my favorite Christmas movies. From staples, like It's A Wonderful Life, Home Alone, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Elf, A Christmas Story, and Die Hard (yes, it is a Christmas movie).
While there have been plenty of Christmas movies I haven't seen, one of the ones that stand out the most, and the one that I've been meaning to watch every year but end up never getting around to is Richard Curtis' Love Actually: The surprisingly polarizing and unapologetically British romantic comedy that sports one of the most impressive casts ever put to screen. I am also a self-described "rom-com connoisseur," after all those years of watching them alongside my mom and my sister, I have grown increasingly fond of them. So, this being a Christmas-centric romantic comedy, it obviously called to me, and just in time for its 19th anniversary, I finally made time to watch it.
Love Actually is split between 10 different plots rolled into one; we have the grieving widow Daniel (Liam Neeson) trying to help his step-son Sam (Thomas Sangster) woo over his crush, the new Prime Minister David (Hugh Grant) sparking a romance with one of his employees Natalie (Martine McCutcheon), and the story of Mark (Andrew Lincoln) who is in love with Juliet (Keira Knightley) who just so happens to be newly married to his best friend Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor). There's also Jamie (Colin Firth), an author struggling with writer's block and fresh out of an unfaithful (not on his part) relationship who falls in love with Aurélia (Lúcia Moniz), his Portuguese housekeeper who doesn't speak English.
Another story follows aging rock and roll star Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) who is trying to get his holiday song to be the Christmas number one single. We meet Harry (Alan Rickman) and Karen (Emma Thompson) whose seemingly happy marriage starts to fall apart when Harry becomes infatuated with his secretary Mia (Heike Makatsch). Sarah (Laura Linney), an American woman, begins to fall in love with her co-worker Karl (Rodrigo Santoro), but her relationship with her mentally ill brother Michael (Michael Fitzgerald) is holding her back. In the film's two raunchier storylines, we meet Colin (Kris Marshall) who plans to go to America in hopes that being British will help him get with American women, we also meet professional body doubles John (Martin Freeman) and Judy (Joanna Page), who meet while filming a sex scene. Lastly, there is Rufus (Rowan Atkinson) a jewelry salesman who takes his job a little too seriously and can never seem to read the room right.
If that seems like a lot to you, that's because it is. Love Actually runs at a whopping 136 minutes, and while that may seem like overkill for so many, I ate just about every minute of it up. I've met people who unapologetically love this film and hail it as the best Christmas movie of all time and others who hate it with every fiber of their being. I definitely fall into the former rather than the latter, but at the same time, I completely see where some of the complaints against this film are coming from. The tone is unabashedly corny and overflowing with sentimentality, even in moments where it really shouldn't, it also has almost every single romantic comedy cliché that you can possibly think of, most of them with a very predictable outcome.
Let's be serious, did you really think David wasn't going to find love before the film ends, he's played by Hugh Grant for Christ's sake. Yet, it's clear that Curtis is fully aware of that from the very beginning of the film, as David's narration reminisces about Heathrow Gate, and even when times are at their worst, he can also think about the joy and pure love that one experiences when reuniting with the ones they love. He even ropes in 9/11, and how the messages from the victims were ones not of hate, but of love. At this very moment, you should probably know exactly what you're going to get, and if you don't, well, the joke is on you.
With a soundtrack that includes holiday classics like "All I Want for Christmas Is You," and cherished love songs like "God Only Knows," Love Actually is the exact kind of movie that is best watched on the couch, wrapped in a warm blanket, and either next to a loved one or if your single, with a holly jolly cocktail in hand. It's nice seeing stars such as Liam Neeson, Andrew Lincoln, Bill Nighy, and the late great Alan Rickman in roles that are far more upbeat than a lot of the characters they play on-screen now or most known for. It is also factually impossible for anyone to dislike Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant, and the fact that they play siblings in the film is a Christmas gift all in itself.
Some of the storylines in the film are far more interesting than others, Mark and Juliet perhaps being the most iconic with David, Daniel, and Sam's ventures being not too far behind. I'll admit some of the film is a bit dated in terms of today's standards (looking at you, Colin), but the pure entertainment and heart that this film brings to the table never had me bored for a second. The editing is a feat all in itself, for a movie juggling so much plot, it moves by very quickly, maybe for those naysayers the film feels like an eternity, but with the perfect amount of cheese and emotionally manipulative moments, it was hard for this writer to not be won over in the end.
Since the film's release, there have been so many other holiday-themed films that have tried to capitalize on Love Actually, titles like Valentine's Day and New Year's Eve come to mind, and neither of those has become holiday classics in the way that this film did. It may be Richard Curtis' magic touch, or Andrew Lincoln's giant note cards, or Emma Thompson sobbing while listening to Joni Mitchell, but Love Actually is not just the ultimate rom-com that the poster hails it as. It also is, if not so more so, the ultimate comfort movie.
Rating: A-