Christmas is a season for indulgences. Things you wouldn’t normally do during the rest of the year are written off to temporary Christmas insanity. Everyone’s motto during this time becomes, “Because it’s Christmas!”
So in the spirit of Christmas excesses, you should catch this year’s seasonal romantic comedy, “Love Actually.” It’s a Christmas movie that’s not gratuitous, a chick flick that isn’t painful and a romance that isn’t unbelievable.
In it, numbers of characters struggle with love during the holiday season. Because there is no one main character, there is no main lesson to be learned about love. Rather it is a look at the different stages of love that people find themselves. In short, it is love “actually” and not love “brought to you by Hollywood.”
The ensemble cast-which includes Colin Firth, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson, Keira Knightley, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Hugh Grant and Laura Linney-works well together, mostly because they don’t need to appear in the same scenes as each other. This was an ingenious move by writer and director Richard Curtis. It solves the problem of actors who don’t like to share the limelight and overact and overcompensate when faced with the prospect.
This method also helps to emphasize the different stages of love that Curtis shows to the audience. There is a 9-year-old boy who experiences his first love, a newly married couple, a romance between porn stars and a middle aged couple coming to a divorce. Curtis looks at all phases of love, not focusing on one in particular, but letting all of the stories play out as they would in reality.
That doesn’t stop the movie from having some magical, albeit unrealistic, moments. When Hugh Grant, who plays the Prime Minister of England, goes door to door searching for his romantic interest, it is humorous (he carols for a group of children and insists to an older woman that he’s going door to door to personally wish everyone a happy Christmas) but unlikely.
However, these moments are countered by the very believable, though not overly somber, realities of love. Emma Thompson’s husband cheats on her with his secretary and by the end of the movie it looks as though they have separated. Another character who is in love with the newly married Keira Knightley professes his love to her but then walks away on his own volition, knowing that he has no chance.
In this way the movie covers the entire gamut of love: the good, the bad, the poignant, the unbelievable, the painful, the missed moments and failed relationships, but also the successful ones.
Throughout the movie, there is also a type of insanity that is chalked up to the Christmas season. Characters are willing to take more chances and put themselves on the line when they would not otherwise. As Liam Neeson’s step-son tells him at one point, “Let’s get the sh** kicked out of us by love!” This leads to some of the more amusing moments on screen as Colin Firth stumbles through a marriage proposal in Portuguese, Neeson’s step-son follows his love through an airport being chased by security and Hugh Grant is caught kissing his love interest on the stage of a children’s Christmas play.
A few characters mention that if there’s ever a time to tell the truth, profess love, or take a chance, it’s during the Christmas season. So even if you’ve never seen a chick flick or sworn off holiday movies for their clichéd plots, watch “Love Actually,” because it’s Christmas.
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