Christmas Movie #7: Love Actually

Are you feeling sad yet? Are you? Huh? Huh? One of the things that I've always found a problem with 'Love Actually' is the music. Oh god, the music. Someone obviously got confused and decided the music from 'Saving Private Ryan' should be applied to a fluffy rom com. 

Besides that, 'Love Actually' has endured well over the last 10 years to become... oh fuck 10 years. 10 years. I'm now aware that I'm not immortal. Fucking Love Actually.

It's dated well. Except for Kris Marshall. At the time he was Nick in 'My Family'. Here he's Nick from 'My Family' in 'Love Actually'. Now he's... alive?

Essentially 'Love Actually' is the romantic comedy sketch show. Certainly, Rowan Atkinson's shop clerk, Colin Firth's bad Portugese and Kris Marshall's trip to America feel like extended skits squeezed into a film.

But so much works. Emma Thompson is just great in every scene, Laura Linney's storyline about her brother is heartbreaking, and the one that I always forget but is lovely, actually (you're lucky I haven't done that more), is Martin Freeman and Joanna Page as nude stand ins, awkwardly trying to ask each other out. And then there's Bill Nighy. God bless you Bill Nighy.

Also, and this has no bearing on anything, but Ant and Dec haven't aged. At all. It's not right. 

The storyline I'm going to foreverly ruin for you is the Andrew Lincoln/Keira Knightley one. Yeh, he's just a sufferer of unrequited love, how sad for him. Watch those scenes and imagine the film isn't called 'Love Actually' but called 'Fear Actually'. Then imagine that when Knightley finds that video tape of all his close ups, that the sweet piano-ey music isn't playing, but the music from 'Vertigo' or another Hitchcock film. That final scene with the cue cards will suddenly seem a whole lot more sinister. You're welcome.

But I do like the film. In face I... no. No I won't do that joke.