Jason Perez
Second Unit
- Joined
- Jul 6, 2003
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Love Actually
Studio: Universal
Year: 2003
Rated: R
Film Length: 135 minutes
Aspect Ratio: Anamorphic Widescreen (2.35:1)
Captions: English
Subtitles: French, and Spanish
Audio: English – Dolby Digital 5.1; French & Spanish – Stereo Surround
Release Date:
April 27th, 2004
“Love actually is all around.”
Richard Curtis’ directorial debut, Love Actually, which features an insanely massive and talented ensemble cast, is an ambitious blend of humor and romance, with a few tear-inducing moments thrown in for good measure. More specifically, Curtis’ tale tells the stories of the trials and tribulations that love causes an array of different people over a five-week period preceding Christmas. Indeed, Curtis juggles no less than nine storylines, so he cannot escape from some of the genre’s clichés, like characters running to the airport before the object of their affections flies off, but even most of these conventions are infused with enough charm that they feel fresh.
Now I should probably point out that I really appreciate movies that contain a lot of storylines and characters, provided they are done right, of course. In my opinion, such movies not only take a lot of effort, but can just as easily collapse under its own weight as be good, so I admire the bravado of filmmakers that take on the challenge.
Fortunately, Love Actually is in the capable hands of Mr. Curtis, who wrote the screenplays for Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, two rather charming British romantic comedies. Quite simply, the man is good with this type of material, and knows how to push his audience’s buttons more often than not. He also proved adept at casting these roles, as the film’s ensemble is not made up not of nobodies, but experienced, well known actors like Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, and Alan Rickman, all of who possess the ability to pull the material off with panache.
Better still, the many storylines, which I will get to shortly, are generally very interesting, so even though I wished some characters were on screen more, I found it easy to become enamored with more than a few of Love Actually’s protagonists. Basically, the film chronicles the relationships between eight sets of couples over the aforementioned five-week period, and takes on all aspects of love, from a young boy’s first love to the anguish and indifference of two people that are probably in the latter stages of a failing marriage. To be sure, for a “romantic comedy”, some of this material is uncharacteristic (as is the “R” rating), and that Curtis makes it work as well as it does is surprising. Indeed, Curtis displays a knack for creating memorable characters, even though none of the characters in Love Actually are developed beyond a superficial level.
Now I don’t want to get into too much detail, but the following is a brief rundown of the roster of characters in Love Actually, and a general description of their storylines. Hugh Grant plays the newly elected Prime Minister of England, probably the nation’s most eligible bachelor, who finds himself drawn to his “tea girl” Natalie (Martine McCutcheon). In another story, we meet Daniel (Liam Neeson), a recently widowed man trying to guide his stepson Sam (Thomas Sangster), who he must now raise alone, through his first experience with love.
Moving on, the just-married Juliet (Keira Knightley) discovers her husband's (Chiwetel Ejiofor) best friend Mark (Andrew Lincoln) is secretly in love with her, although he outwardly treats her like crap. In the fourth storyline, a business executive named Harry (Alan Rickman) encourages an employee named Sarah (Laura Linney) to act on her feelings for her coworker Karl (Rodrigo Santoro), while simultaneously being lured away from his wife Karen (Emma Thompson) by his young siren of a secretary.
Yet another storyline, and probably the most charming one, finds writer Jaime Bennett (Colin Firth) fleeing to France after he catches his brother messing around with his beloved. Once in France, he falls head over heels for his housekeeper Aurelia (Lúcia Moniz), despite the language barrier between them. In relationship number six, a couple meets while filming an erotic film. Oddly enough, they both appear to be rather shy and nervous, despite being completely nude as they make small talk.
Probably the funniest story, however, involves a sarcastic, washed up rock star named Billy Mack (Bill Nighy), who is attempting to revive his career by pushing a god-awful Christmas remake of one of his hits, entitled “Love Is All Around”. What is so funny about Billy is his marketing strategy (brutal honesty), which includes begging for fans to buy his single, even though he acknowledges that “it is total crap”.
Tucked neatly in-between these many, many storylines are even more smaller tangential stories, all connected to each other in vague or co-incidental ways. I will mention only one – Colin Frissell (Kris Marshall), a caterer, is having a difficult time with the ladies of London, so he heads to Wisconsin, the Mecca of romance (?), where his English accent wows the unbelievably hot women (January Jones, Elisha Cuthbert) who are just lounging in the local pub. It all leads to a ridiculous, but pretty funny conclusion for Colin. If only we were all so lucky!!!
All kidding aside, Love Actually is a romantic comedy that is just bursting with humorous characters, charm, and great acting from all around. Not everything works, but I applaud Richard Curtis for being bold enough to tackle more storylines and characters than any most romantic comedies would even dream of, not to mention his handling of some of the more somber elements of the story (e.g. Harry and Karen’s failing marriage or Mark’s secret love for Juliet). As an aside, look out for a hilarious cameo by Rowan Atkinson as a department store clerk!
Though it may not be the “ultimate romantic comedy”, I think Love Actually has a little something in it for everyone, so it is hard to resist.
SO, HOW DOES IT LOOK?
Presented by Universal in anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1), Love Actually really looks nice, but should this be a surprise considering that it was a recent, large-scale production? To be more specific, the image has many pleasing qualities, such as a crisp and blemish-free print, splendidly rendered details, and is free from digital intrusions like artifacting and edge enhancement halos.
Further, although colors appear to be slightly muted at times, they are accurately drawn for the most part, with only a slight amount of dot crawl visible around deep red objects. The pigmentation, or lack thereof, of the characters’ skin also appears very true, and whites are extremely clean and bright. Finally, the rock solid black level translates into exceptional shadow detail, as well as creates a remarkable sense of texture and three-dimensionality. Overall, despite a couple of minor quibbles, this is a lovely, very film-like transfer by the folks at Universal!
WHAT IS THAT NOISE?
As you no doubt are aware of by now, Love Actually is a good, old-fashioned British rom-com, so it should not be a shock that the source material won’t place a very heavy demand on your amplification/speaker system. Nevertheless, the source material is reproduced in fine fashion.
As is the case with almost any other romantic comedy, the rear speakers do not get to break much of a sweat, as they are largely confined to rendering background noise or embellishing the film’s music. The front of the sound field, however, exhibits an ample sense of depth, tangible instrument separation, and natural-sounding timbres. Frequency response is also very good, with the females’ voices exhibiting to crystalline highs and a silky upper midrange. Speaking of dialogue, of which there is a lot of, it pleases me to report that all the characters’ speech is reproduced in a clear and natural manner throughout the film.
As mentioned earlier, the surrounds are not really active, except for a brief period during the school talent show at the end of the film, but happily, the LFE channel provides some welcome punch to the variety of music used in the film, especially the R&B or pop tunes. This is also true of Sam’s drumming practice sessions – and if any of you have kids that play musical instruments, you will recognize the expression on his father’s face! I played drums in elementary school, so I know it well!
To wrap it up, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, since Love Actually is a romantic comedy filled with dialogue and music, the soundtrack performs about as one might expect it to. That is not necessarily a bad thing though, and unless there is some reason you are expecting an aggressive, hyper-dynamic mix, you should be more than satisfied with the way this film sounds.
EXTRAS, EXTRAS!!!
Feature Length Commentary
The yack track for Love Actually, which features Director Richard Curtis and actors Hugh Grant, Bill Nighy and Thomas Sangster (also Hugh Grant’s cousin), is both entertaining and informative. Impressively, although all three-and-a-half fellows were chatting over the film, they do a good job of keeping things going without rambling or talking over the top of each other. Highlights (for me) included:
--- Richard Curtis revealing that the airport terminal shots were taken with a hidden camera over the period of a week. Whenever a good shot “happened” the crew on hand would ask people to allow the footage to appear in the film.
--- Mr. Curtis talking about the inspiration for some of the scenes in the film, including one inspired by his attendance of Jim Henson’s (of Muppet fame) funeral.
--- A brief, but funny comment on how Junior Simpson, who plays a DJ in the film, was cast.
These are just a few of the things I personally found interesting, and this track is filled with plenty more insight into the film, especially the music used. Even though there are a few spots where commentary becomes sparse, this track is ultimately insightful (and funny) enough to be well worth a listen if you enjoyed the film.
Deleted Scenes
There are a substantial amount of deleted scenes included (over 30 minutes worth), with introductions by Richard Curtis, who informs viewers that the initial cut of Love Actually was approximately three-and-a-half hours! Obviously, there are still more scenes that are not included here, but there is still a plethora of interesting footage available, some of which reveals completely new storylines cut from the film.
As you might expect, since Curtis introduces the deleted scenes, a bigger picture of his original vision for the film, and an understanding of why these sequences were not in the final cut out, can be derived. There is some good stuff here…be sure to check it out!!!
The Music of Love Actually
In “The Music of Love Actually”, which appears to run for about 9 minutes, Director Richard Curtis discusses his use of songs by The Beach Boys and Joni Mitchell, among others. Since music plays such a big part in films, it is interesting to hear why particular pieces of music or songs were used at certain points in Love Actually, and why they were important to him. He even mentions some of the songs he originally intended to use that did not make it into a particular scene, and reveals the reasons why. After each segment, the scene in the film that features that particular song is played (I presume – see note below).
NOTE: Although my Love Actually disc has no scratches on it, this featurette gave the three different DVD players I tried it on fits. Specifically, after the first two segments on Joni Mitchell and Olivia Olson, the featurette started returning to Olivia Olson’s big scene, even though Richard Curtis was talking about the Beach Boys or Eva Cassidy. Hopefully this is a problem isolated to my disc, and since the scenes featuring songs by Joni Mitchell and Olivia Olson play immediately after Mr. Curtis discusses them, I hope I am safe in assuming that you should be able to see the scenes featuring songs from the other artists he talks about.
Music Video
The music video for Kelly Clarkson’s “The Trouble With Love Is” is included.
SCORE CARD
(on a five-point scale)
Movie: :star: :star: :star: :star:
Video: :star: :star: :star: :star:
Audio: :star: :star: :star: 1/2
Extras: :star: :star: :star: :star:
Overall: :star: :star: :star: :star:
THE LAST WORD
Though I am not inclined to agree with its billing as “the ultimate” romantic comedy, I really enjoyed Love Actually’s fast pace, good humor, and wonderful use of music. Of course, I realize that some people may not like having so many storylines to follow, and would prefer to develop an emotional attachment to a couple of characters. To be honest, I usually prefer that approach as well, but I am really glad to see someone take such a bold, fresh approach to the romantic comedy.
To be sure, there are a couple of ideas that don’t quite work, and some characters’ storylines are left unresolved, but in a film this ambitious it is remarkable that so much of it does work. Indeed, there is always something going on in this film, and Curtis delivers enough unforced laughs and good cheer to make me sure that I will revisit this film in the near future. It doesn’t hurt that the acting is top-notch either. Seriously, with a cast like this, Richard Curtis could have probably just slept in his director’s chair and the film would not have turned out much worse.
As it turns out, Universal’s DVD treatment of Love Actually is also quite respectable. Specifically, this disc’s image/sound quality gets it done, and the extras include a wealth of genuinely interesting material cut from the film and an enjoyable commentary track. Given that, and the charming nature of the film, I can recommend it without any reservation. Unless you absolutely despise romantic comedies, give this one a spin. Recommended!!!
Stay tuned…
