Christmas Classic Review #1: Love Actually
In selected cinemas and available on NOW TV & Sky Cinema
I have two trains of thought when it comes to Richard Curtis’ ensemble hit Love Actually. On one hand, it is a highly effective slice of festive sentimentality that features some of the UK’s finest thespians, with particularly memorable performances from Alan Rickman, Bill Nighy, Emma Thompson, and Hugh Grant.
Some of the film’s best remembered scenes are truly ones to savour; take, for example, the moment Nighy’s ageing and bad-mannered rock star desecrates a picture of Noughties pop band Blue while on national television. Or Grant’s chaotic Prime Minister and his iconic dad dancing around the halls of 10 Downing Street. Not to mention Rickman’s cantankerous interaction with Rowan Atkinson’s overzealous shop attendant.
All are genuine laugh-out-loud moments and befitting of Curtis’ quintessentially British brand of comedy (assuming, of course, that your immediate definition of ‘quintessentially British’ is unrelatable and improbably wealthy upper-to-middle-class people). Unfortunately, they do not add up to a compelling whole, with Love Actually’s glaringly obvious flaws more commonplace than the fleeting moments of joy it affords its audience.
In particular, Curtis’ complete indifference to virtually all of his story’s female characters (the film especially wastes the generational talents of Thompson and Laura Linney) and slightly troubling tendency to make them putty in the hands of emotionally incompetent, middle-aged white men is a tonal feature that has not aged well. Nor has the film’s admittedly less frequent moments of body shaming or crass sexualisation.
One might argue, however, that this is very much Curtis’ modus operandi as a writer-director - an incoherent, barely believable central narrative that is outshone by grandiose moments of heart-warming schmaltz, delivered by a cast that you can very much file under the ‘best of British’. Consequently, Love Actually remains a firm festive favourite, but far removed from the genuine classics that lie amongst its seasonal counterparts.
