My brother mentioned he watched Love, Actually tonight -- reminding me how much I love the writer (and sometimes director) Richard Curtis.I first-lurved him as a co-writer of Blackadder, which was hilarious from one season to the next. Then I saw 4 Weddings and a Funeral, knowing nothing about it, and SUPER loved it. And then I saw Love, Actually and was once again amazed at his ability to write completely over the top farce, and then be sappy in the next scene, and it works. And finally I discovered his TV series The Vicar of Dibley, where he wrote everything from sex-with-sheep-jokes, to a sweet friendship that grows up between the vicar and her most pig-headed parishioner, to a fantastic romance story for the final season.
I mean... what WHAT could be funnier than Bill Nighy as the washed up pop star trying to make a comeback with a tacky remake song he knows is shite? And what could be more moving than the Prime Minister's introduction about Heathrow airport, and the fact that if you really look love is, actually, all around us? How can one man manage to fit both this storyline, and this theme, into the same movie?? The man even made me like the song "Love is All Around" and introduced me to "God Only Knows" from the Beach Boys. Genius I say.
Or what about 4 Weddings, where one of the first lines of dialogue is:
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuuuck! Fuck! Fuck iiiit!
And the next-funniest scene is:
Bugger! Bugger! Bugger!
And yet there's also that incredible scene where John Hannah reads WH Auden's "Funeral Blues" at his boyfriend's funeral. Soooo sad. "I thought that love would last forever. I was wrong." Waaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!
2 comments:
I thought the movie had it's touching and interesting moments, but if Love Actually was supposedly about "love is all around ..." then why was so much of the movie taken up with pre-pubescent sex jokes/skits and lust and lewdness, rather than love?
Did I miss something? I'd only give it a 3 out of 10.
Because, as I said, Curtis is so good at prepubescent humour and lust! I think he's one of the best prepubescent lust humourists! And that's why I think his touching moments are so good, because of the contrast. It's not like a movie that's sappy all the way through.
But it's funny that that's what you took away from the movie, because when I was thinking about the movie, trying to remember the storylines, all I remembered was:
- affecting story about the woman who thinks her husband bought her jewelery and then realizes it's not for her (thought it was realistically done, definitely about love)
- cute story about little boy *in love*, and his poor father getting over death of wife (full of love in that story)
- sweet story about two people who fall in love despite language barrier (love, not lust)
- man who realizes he's in love with his best friend's wife, and how should he handle it (and I think he handles it well! and it was about love)
- Prime Minister who falls in love with the cute-pudgy tea girl, and tells off the US President at a time when much of the world was so sick of Bush (great fantasy! yay! And definitely about love.)
- Loser in Britain who finds he's a sex god in America ( another fantasy, yay for loser guys!)
- and of course my FAAAVE storyline about the washed up rock star and his shitty Christmas song... OMG I watch that song video about once a year, it's so funny. That actor was born to play that role. And it's so funny and touching when he realizes that the only person he loves is his manager and he wants to spend Christmas with him! That was totally about love, not lust.
Honest to God, I can't sit here and name whatever the smutty jokes were. I'm sure they existed, or maybe it's cause I saw a TV edited version or something. But all I took away from the movie was a bunch of funny love stories. (Oh! And the great band playing scene at the wedding. A loving gesture from a friend.)
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