7.25.09 Love, Actually

An uplifting intertwining of roughly 47 stories, Love, Actually succeeds at every romantic facet it attempts and leaves you both ecstatic and heart broken by the time the credits roll. Stir in some humor that hits just the right notes at just the right times and what you've got is a great movie that no dude would mind watching with his girlfriend.

To explain every story embedded in Love, Actually would be a wasteful mess on paper despite it's near perfect execution on screen. Much in the fashion of Playing By Heart (a bested foe in this quest), the film has several stories to follow, the difference being here that there's no real mystery about who everyone is and how they are connected. We plainly see the relationships cross, and then are taken again into separate stories, touching back on each connection a few times throughout.

Imagining the preproduction bulletin board for this movie makes my brain hurt. Little papers held in with push pins, the push pins connected with different colored strings; it must have looked like Spiderman burst in and started just firing away. But even through the mess, first time director Richard Curtis was able to make sense of it in the best way possible and portray each relationship as it's own entity as well as in connection with the others.

The cast list is extensive to say the least. Liam Neeson, Alan Rickman, Bill Nighy, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Kiera Knightley, Colin Firth, the list goes on and on and there's not a misfire in the bunch. Most fun among them not being any of those listed, but a little boy Sam, played by Thomas Sangster. His character I think does the best job of pointing out the overlying meaning of the entire film, being that the pure agony of being in love, is worth love's pure joy. He's just such a fun character, and his father is played by Liam Neeson who unfortunately does not plant 8 inch nails into anyone thighs in this film. The movie encompasses the experience of love, both good and bad, from ages 11 to over 50 and manages to make all of them relate to my 25-year-old self without feeling too childish or too old.

The one problem I had while watching it was that a few of the stories weren't as strongly connected as the others were. While I was intrigued greatly by Kiera Knightley and Colin Firth's separate stories, their connection to the whole seemed more in passing than the others which seemed to build what I thought was the "core" of the film. But aside from that I was entertained throughout, impressed by the acting, and stunned by the story telling.

4.5 stars

And special thanks to Kristin, my partner in crime in the Horror/Romance Extravaganza, for doing her damnedest to remember all the Portuguese subtitles since they were absent from the copy I had. It was probably just as fun as if I had been able to read them just watching her trying to remember EXACTLY what they said. I'm sure she was close.