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Love Actually
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| Year: |
2003
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Director: |
Richard Curtis
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| Stars: |
Bill Nighy, Colin Firth, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, Gregor Fisher, Martine McCutcheon, Andrew Lincoln, Keira Knightley, Laura Linney, Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman, Rowan Atkinson, Joanna Page
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| Genre: |
Comedy, Romance |
| Rating: |
  6 (from 4 votes) |
| Review: |
Growing up in the eighties I was reared on endless re-runs of those classic American action series’ all featuring those plush Californian streets and soft American accents which force fed the young and impressionable a sanitised vision of the world, a world where everyone in the city owns a little part of the capitalist dream. It’s the same vision that the government sells us every day; if you stay in school, go to college, get a job in the city and work real hard, then maybe with a bit of luck you too can live your own little dream. So I did everything they told me to do and yet when I moved to London, I found that I hadn’t bought into the dream, I had bought into the nightmare.
And so I look at the characters in Love Actually, flirting away in these flash open plan offices, with their flat screen monitors, never doing any work, who go home to their beautifully decorated apartments every night and I ask myself? Where the fuck does their money come from? They're in Admin!
So this is a film about life in London? Well it aint my London I can assure you. Rent up; salary down, an office full of fucking mongs devoid of social skills, mugged on the way home, the constant stench of trash and urine; that’s my London. And yet every where I go, I am surrounded by images of unobtainable wealth and beauty in films such as this, only to go home and have to de-louse my mattress every night.
So okay it’s supposed to be a feel good film? A bit of escapism maybe? Then why underpin it with that pretentious wank about 9/11? Meanwhile I just can’t get past the bitter taste of the last cockroach in a sandwich I bit into, or the nights I’ve spent shivering in bed because my heating broke.
So ‘Love actually is all around…’ Where? All I see in London is snotty Fashionistas (the type who wear leg warmers over their Jimmy Choo’s) and at the other end of the scale, hideously ugly fat women who sweat when they eat.
Hugh Grant stars as the Prime Minister who falls for his young secretary Natalie (Martine McCutcheon) but every time I see Hugh Grant I just see that herpes-ridden crack whore that knoshed him off a few years back (no offence to any crack addicted prostitutes who may post here…..or anyone who has herpes – god have mercy on your soul).
Incidentally when Natalie says that she lives in the rough end of Wandsworth, I thought, 'No, I'M ROTTING in the rough end of Wandsworth!'
Then there’s the lovelorn Mark (Andrew Lincoln). IS HE FUCKING INSANE? If your mate’s got a fit wife (Keira Knightley) and you fancy her, you don’t ignore her, you worm your way into their lives, become her friend and then you can sneak about their house and load up on all of her soiled thongs (they really do spice up a wanking session). I nearly cried at the end when she rushed out into the street and kissed him, but not because it was poignant but because he didn’t try cupping her tit or at least try fingering her down an alleyway (When he got home, he could get two or three wanks out of that before the smell wears off his fingers!). Oh come on Spinners we’ve all done it!
Jamie Bennett (Colin Firth) falls for his Portuguese housekeeper Aurelia (Lúcia Moniz) and eventually proposes to her, when what he should have done is hired a young Kosovan girl, banged her up the wrong ‘un on the first night and then not had to worry about the marriage bit.
Alan Rickman stars as Harry; the most inept philanderer I have ever seen in my life, who gets up close and personal with his sultry colleague Mia (Heike Makatsch) in front of his wife Karen at the Christmas party! Why the fuck did he bring his missus? Even so I didn’t agree with the way his wife (Emma Thompson) started bawling in public at which point Harry should have slapped her across the chops and said ‘KNOW YOUR ROLE!’ You’ve got to have a bit of sympathy for him, a husband can’t really spunk in the same mouth that kisses his kids goodbye in the morning, can he? Watching him explain that to his wife, now that WOULD have been comedy!
Incidentally, my Christmas party consisted of sitting round a table listening to some wanky client bleating on about his friend Rupert's hiking holiday in the Andes.
Next we come to Sarah (Laura Linney) who has to pass up her dream shag because her spakko brother needs her help. Just do what we did with my window-licking brother; toss him in a cupboard and feed him fish heads!
John (Martin Freeman), Colin (Kris Marshall) and Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) make up the other notable characters. The latter being the only character I really appreciated; a washed-up old rocker who showed a total contempt for the world of Love Actually that I can empathise with.
I will now end my intellectual evaluation of this film, but remember to keep an eye out for the hidden extras on the DVD, I heard it features a deleted scene of Liam Neeson’s character furiously bumming that annoying kid of his.
P.S
I can’t back that up.
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| Reviewer: |
Phil Michaels
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