“Love Actually,” actually not loved

In this cynical, hardened world, it’s kind of refreshing to see a movie that presents the most dreadful clichés without a hint of apology. A man proposes marriage to a woman with whom he has never held a conversation — and she accepts, and the band conveniently behind her starts to play. Another man falls in love with a subordinate because she’s cute and vulnerable, but they have absolutely nothing in common.
“Love Actually” has these tired motifs, and so many more. I kept expecting the filmmakers to wink at the audience, letting us know that they know we’ve seen this a thousand times. No wink was forthcoming. Either they didn’t know they were recycling these plot points — an improbability — or they didn’t care.
The cast includes all living, non-retired British film stars. A half-dozen plots are packed into this two-hour movie, and since many reviewers have commented on the hanging plot threads, unnecessary characters, and phony “love stories” that would never work in real life, I won’t repeat it.
“Actually” is more proof that we are reverting to the pre-Shakespearean mode of storytelling where writers needn’t provide any psychological motives for their characters. In “Erin Brockovich,” we never learn why the Evil Corporation is poisoning the population of a small California town. They are a corporation, they are big, ergo evil. Similarly, in “Actually,” the script juxtaposes several men and several women together. Like positive and negative ions, they are attracted to each other and they bond. No explanation necessary.
(Thankfully, they spared us the gay subplot that is becoming de rigeur these days. That’s the only thing for which the scriptwriter needs to be thanked.)

A few other jarringly weird things threw me off. Like when Claudia Schiffer appears, and even though they talked about her twice before, and Liam Neeson seems to recognize her as Schiffer, she turns out to be not Schiffer, but a woman named “Carol.” Huh?
The creepy sexualization of a pre-adolescent girl, in the Christmas pageant segment, also put me off. I realize that the zeitgeist sees nothing wrong with making little kids into sex objects, but it still disturbs me, and I hope it always does.
There are a lot of fat jokes for a movie that’s aimed squarely at the female demographic. Then again, that did set up Hugh Grant’s “Weeeeeell, do we really call her fat?” line, one of the funniest in the movie.
Last, I don’t get why they needed to make H.G. the prime minister. His speech about America “bullying” Great Britain was laughable. The U.K. is America’s closest ally, by choice on the part of both nations. That’s been true through Tory and Labor rule; nobody forced them to work with us, and both countries have benefitted from that arrangement. Even if the prime minister wanted to steer a more “independent” course for his nation, publicly insulting the president would be tactless, rude, and stupid.
If you haven’t seen this movie, will you like it? If you’re a fan of most of the cast, then yes, you probably will. If you’re not, then you’ll probably think it’s a hodge-podge of hackneyed romantic stories and little else. As for me, despite my enduring affection for Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson, the movie did not win my heart.