Topic: Yuletide 2011

[Danae Cassandra]

Love Actually

Multiple different stories about love intersect around the Christmas season: people discovering love, sacrificing for love, holding love in, letting love out, being thrilled by love, being devastated by love. 

First off, thanks to Sam for recommending this one, I enjoyed it a lot.  I thought it was mostly very well done, with an appropriate mixture of realism and fantasy, as well as joy and pain.  I enjoyed all of the characters and their stories - except the farce that was Colin's story.  Those sequences could have been cut and there would have been no loss. 

However, the rest of the film more than makes up for those parts.  I love Alan Rickman, and he makes his character somewhat sympathetic even when you don't want to sympathize with him.  I loved Bill Nighy's parody of an aging rock star, and the relationship between Daniel (Liam Neeson) and his stepson. 

Yes, some of the stories are stronger than others, and it doesn't delve into any real depth (but if you expect that in a rom-com, I don't know what to tell you), but I thought it was a decent, enjoyable film

Overall: 3/5

[samuelrichardscott]

Glad you enjoyed it. I have to agree Colin Firth's story was the weakest, but I quite enjoyed Martin Freeman's and of course the main one between Hugh Grant and Martine McCutcheon. It was actually the young boy (name escapes me) who goes to the airport whose story I enjoyed the most though. It's quite oversentimental but it's well structured and a guilty pleasure for a non-female.

[Danae Cassandra]

I didn't mean the actor Colin Firth (his was the story with the Portuguese maid, which I didn't mind) but the character of Colin Frissell, Kris Marshall's character - the guy who is looking to get laid and goes to America and immediately meets those girls who immediately jump in bed with him.  Jamie and Aurelia's story I could buy, even if it seemed a little rushed, but that whole thing with Colin Frissell was just too much.