Movie Review: Love Actually
Rate This Article
What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that the movie's R rating comes from
some very strong language, sexual references and sexual
situations, including prostitutes and adultery, and humorous
nudity. A character's history of sex, drugs, and rock and roll
is played for humor. There are some tense and sad scenes. Some
audience members may object to the portrayal of the American
President (Billy Bob Thornton) as a crude bully. One of the
movie's many strengths is its matter-of-fact portrayal of
loving inter-racial friendship and romance.
Families who see this movie could talk about how the characters handle their feelings of loss, longing, and fear.
Common Sense Media Review
LOVE ACTUALLY is as stuffed with goodies as the Christmas
stockings for those at the very top of Santa's "nice" list --
and it is just as entertaining, too.
You say you like romantic comedies with gorgeous stars, witty dialogue delivered in swoon-worthy English accents, and oodles of happy endings? This movie gives you 10 at once. And yet none of the stories ever feels hurried or incomplete.
The interwoven stories all take place in the weeks before Christmas and cover many kinds of love -- touching, tender, sweet, charming, funny, and bittersweet. They include a Prime Minister ( Hugh Grant) who is drawn to the outspoken girl who delivers his tea, an 11-year old ( Thomas Sangster) who wants to attract the attention of the coolest girl in school, a man in love with his best friend's new bride, a waiter who is sure that all his dreams of romance will come true if he goes to America, a thoroughly married man ( Alan Rickman) whose flirtatious secretary is making him wonder how thoroughly married he is, a rock star (Bill Nighy) angling for a comeback with a cheesy Christmas single, a heartbroken writer ( Colin Firth) who can't stop thinking about the woman who cleans his house, even though they don't understand each other's languages, and a couple who meet at work as movie stand-ins assigned to increasingly (and hilariously) more intimate poses.
Richard Curtis, who wrote Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill for the first time directs his own screenplay with heart and style. It helps, of course, that he has a dream cast, including newcomer Sangster, a real-life cousin of Hugh Grant and already a first-rate actor and a knock-out screen presence. Each of the actors creates complete, endearing, vivid, and vulnerable characters that we will remember long after we have forgotten most "stars" who spend two full hours onscreen in the latest multiplex fodder.
The movie begins with the Prime Minister musing on the arrivals section of the airport and the love everywhere as people are reunited with those who are most precious to them. This theme continues with a faded rock star (the magnificent Nighy) recording a silly Christmas version of "Love is All Around" (also featured in Four Weddings and a Funeral). But other themes just as important can be summed up somewhere between the words of W.S. Gilbert -- "Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady" and a celebration of what one character not unhappily calls "the total agony of being in love."
This is a movie about taking big chances (both hopeful and hopeless), about making big gestures to show our love, and about big, big feelings that may make us crazy and miserable but remind us that we are alive and why we are alive.
