Love Actually (2003)
Richard Curtis
Impression published on Monday, 2009-12-28 | Film | 2 stars
If Mel Gibson's Braveheart is the category closer--the literal ultimate and metaphorical "end of file"--for the hyper-masculine, blood-and-guts, cowboys-and-indians, hack-and-slash action beat-em-up genre inasmuch as it closes the entire category down (and shuts the lights off on its way out), preemptively negating potential competition from future entries in the genre with the sheer technical excellence of its violently attention-holding, ham-fisted production and its epic sense of scale, then I tender that Zach Snyder's 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake is the Braveheart of zombie movies.
And if Zach Snyder's DotD is the Braveheart of zombie movies in that it does for zombie movies what Braveheart does for epic adventures, then Richard Curtis' Love Actually is the Braveheart of romantic comedies. The British television writer turned director and producer who, hailing from the most most bizarre culture ever to thrive on the face of the planet Earth and having an impressive resume that includes such Brit-schlock mainstays as Bridget Jones and Notting Hill, basically painted his career into a corner and wrote himself out of job job by writing and staging the most epic, no-holds-barred, all-stops-pulled-right-out-of-the-cot-damn-board-and-thrown-on-the-floor, ego sum primus et novissimus, cast of thousands, cheeseball British romantic Christmas comedy Thunderdome demolition derby that has ever been staged.
No leaf of the genre is left un-overturned. No cliche of heterosexual romance is left un-dramatized. No womanish feeling or childish behavior is even so much as indirectly criticized. No single dude in this movie is presented as anything but a pithless and obsequious eunuch whose only hope, goal and inspiration is anything other than to win the affections of a woman. No ending suggests the faintest trace or hints at anything like a future possibility of unhappiness.
Basically, this bare-knuckle-brawling, skull-crushing battle royale of a romantic comedy--which doesn't just feature castrated, fish-bellied rom-com sweethearts (e.g. Colin Firth) and coke-nosed Hollywood soft-belts of the First Order (e.g. Keira Nightly), but which also includes an impressive list of sometime tough guys such as Bill Nighy (Victor from Underworld), Alan Rickman (Hans from Die Hard, Liam Neeson (who recently played the vengeful torturing anti-hero in the hilariously over-the-top Taken) and Chiwetel Ejiofor (the super bad dude from Serenity)--not only makes our home-grown productions appear paler than pallid by comparison, it makes them seem utterly irrelevant.
Indeed, Love Actually makes pretty much all other romantic comedies seem irrelevant.
