Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
I’ve been saying this for a while, but I’m going to go officially on the record right now: LOVE, ACTUALLY is going to turn out to be one of this year’s biggest hits. Richard Curtis is one of those guys you just don’t bet against, and this buzz on this one is building steadily as we get closer to release. At the beginning of the year, it would have seemed like total madness to go head-to-head with the final MATRIX film, but after the extremely mixed responses to RELOADED, it looks like Universal may have some very good news this November...
What is it about good writing that is so impressive? I mean, hundreds of movies are released every year (this year, what 400+?). So why is it at the end of the year I can always pick out on one hand the films that actually made an impression writing-wise? Using that math, there are roughly 2.5 films per one hundred released that are memorable. Depressing? Partly. Mostly it just makes me grateful for those 10 or so films every year that are added to the ever-growing DVD collection. So in a year such as this, where the best films I’ve seen most likely won’t get a wide release (Sundance faves ‘Die Mommy Die’ and ‘The Station Agent’ and by all means, if you get the chance, please go see both), and there is no release from Wes Anderson or Scott Frank, it’s a real joy to have seen Richard Curtis’ ‘Love Actually.’
You all are smart enough to go to IMDB to figure out who’s in the cast, but just know it’s everyone who’s anyone in Britain. Colin Firth, Liam Neeson, Hugh Grant... wait, I said I wasn’t going to name them all. But you get the point. Good cast. Oh... I’ll say this: Keira Knightly. Future Mrs. Keira Dough. Yikes... she’s something.
Okay, so plot? Similar in structure to Altman’s ‘Short Cuts,’ Curtis uses intertwining characters and plot points to tell the story of the love in 10 or so people’s lives. Neeson plays a widower with an 11 year old son (who steals the film) both dealing with the loss of love and attempting to find new love; Grant (so good in Curtis’ ‘Notting Hill’) plays the newly elected Prime Minister, who finds it a bit difficult to concentrate around his tea-server (Martine McCutcheon); Firth is a man who, after being dumped, heads to a cottage in France to write his novel, but finds that love isn’t necessarily the international language (that would be Portuguese); Knightly is a new bride trying to deal with her husband’s jealous best friend; Emma Thompson & Alan Rickman (I told you everyone was in it) play a married couple with children, testing the limits of their love for each other; as well as several other characters all dealing with love in some form. That’s quite a run-on sentence. Forgive me.
I don’t want to get too much into specifics, but there are a few things I feel I must talk about, as they were too good to not start buzzing about now. First off, the casting of the 11 year old son of Neeson. The girls I was with all ‘awwwed’ when he first showed up, but it was his acting that got me. The kid’s real. Doesn’t exude any of that ‘I’m a child actor and look at me, I’m precocious!’ crap. He’s just real. And funny, to boot.
Then there’s Bill Nighy. See below. The guy’s incredible. Every scene he’s in had the audience laughing.
Then there’s the Colin sub-plot. Colin’s a guy who’s had a brilliant plan to come to America and seduce our women. Damn him. Damn him straight to H-E-double hockey sticks. Harry... let me say this. You’re gonna freak out. Best use of a “24” star yet, plus the scene (and you’ll know it when you see it... it involves ‘Milwaukee’) has January Jones. Fantastic stuff.
You know those reviewer-friendly quotes like ‘A rollicking good time!!’ and ‘I laughed non-stop!!’? Well, they actually fit here. I can’t really say enough about what a blast this movie was. The great part is, too, that every of the above-mentioned actors gets a real moment to shine. And I’ll say this: Bill Nighy had better get nominated for his work in this film. It’s Kevin-Kline-FISH-CALLED-WANDA good. I’m not even going to say what his deal is, other than to say that along with Johnny Depp’s ‘Cap’n Jack Sparrow,’ the Stones are proving fertile ground for creating characters.
The only problems I had with the film, and this is all put down on those handy-dandy survey sheets, is that the resolution of the film is a bit... lacking in some areas. The challenge of creating a piece like this is getting the audience to care for all of these characters, and Curtis succeeds 100%. But that actually ends up being his biggest problem: we care so much about each of the characters, that to not be given a proper resolution for each of them seems... wrong.
Technically speaking, the film was a bit rough, but the release date is months away, so I’m sure it’ll all get worked out. Granted, I was sitting in the front row (I mention that because it’s entirely possible that the ‘roughness’ I saw was due to the extreme, migraine-inducing view I had), but a lot of the film looked unfinished. Now, I could definitely be mistaken here, but it also looks like they filmed on digital, which I found interesting. Some of the more polished scenes looked just like film, which is where my confusion came from, because suddenly it was like watching something off my Digicam. But since the few scenes that looked good looked so good, I can only assume that the rest of the film will look that good in a few months’ time.
The soundtrack is fantastic. Every song is a classic, perfectly used to deliver either a comic punch to the scene or the right weight behind the drama. The temp score they were using was 100% ‘Life Is Beautiful,’ so obviously the score’s still being worked on, which they said prior to the start of the film.
Here’s a fair warning: THIS FILM IS AN UNABASHED ROMANTIC COMEDY. Hell, the movie opens with shots of the Heathrow welcoming gate with people hugging and laughing and kissing and a voiceover telling us that love is everywhere, that despite how bad the world may seem, for the most part, people still crave love and are willing to do good things to achieve it (it was a bit like the beginning of ‘Dogma,’ actually, with the exception of the two foul-mouthed, crotchless, prank-pulling angels). It’s mush, I guess, but I’m a sucker for mush. And this is mush that’s actually got some substance... you know, like oatmeal. And really, on a cold morning (and this comes out in November, so for most of the country, it’ll be nippy), who doesn’t love a good bowl of oatmeal? Now that I type that, I realize that the majority of the people who will actually read this are probably not, you know, huge oatmeal freaks, so ignore that sentence. For the rest of us, go check this movie out. It’s absolutely worth your $6.50-$14.00 (depending on where you live, naturally).
Mushfully yours,
John Dough
Thanks, man. I look forward to seeing the final cut of this, and I hope that after all the trimming that is inevitable, we get a fully-loaded DVD with all the subplots restored to their full running time.
"Moriarty" out.
