Romancefest 2016: Love Actually

When I first moved to Portland, LOVE ACTUALLY played at the theater a couple blocks from my apartment for what seemed like months. Everyone said it was great and somehow I never made it down the street to check it out. So, I finally have.

Richard Curtis' 2003 UK romantic comedy features a huge cast of characters, mostly played by very famous actors, all intertwined in various ways, all in various different forms of love stories. It's like Curtis wanted to make the be-all, end-all romantic comedy, with 20 movies worth of couples and plots in just over 2 hours running time. Sounds like a mess. Amazingly, it works.

Where do I start?

So, the whole thing takes place in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

Billy Nighy stars as an aging rock star who, at the urging of his manager (Gregor Fisher) has recorded a Christmas novelty song.

Hugh Grant is the new PM and he has eyes for a junior member of his household staff (Martine McCutcheon).

Liam Neeson has recently lost his wife and now must raise her son, his stepson (Thomas Sangster), who needs some help navigating through his first huge crush.

Colin Firth is a jilted writer who escapes to his country house in France where he begins to fall in love with his Portuguese housekeeper (Lucia Moniz) even though neither of them understand each other's language.

Laura Linney is a graphic designer who has the hots for a co-worker (Rodrigo Santoro). Her boss is Alan Rickman, who has the hots for his assistant (Heike Makatsch) even though he's happily married to Emma Thompson.

Keira Knightley and Chiwetel Ejiofor are recently married and think Ejiofor's buddy (Andrew Linclon) hates Knightley, but really he's in love with her.

Kris Marshall is a young dude who feels like he's struck out with every chick in the UK and decides to head for the US to try to hook up with American chicks, who end up including the likes of January Jones, Elisha Cuthbert, Shannon Elizabeth and Denise Richards.

Finally, Martin Freeman and Joanna Page are nude stand-ins for sex scenes in motion pictures who make easy small talk while in provocative poses together but struggle with shyness in other contexts.

So, look at all that. All that's going on in the movie. It's not confusing, but it's a lot.

The movie's strength is that it is overall happy and optimistic. This is truly a movie about how love conquers all, in one way or another, even if some stories are sad, and some stories are unrequited. Others are bittersweet, and still others feature traditional Hollywood endings. We've got a sampling of basically every rom-com outcome here.

The other strength is the fact that the cast is amazing. Has there ever been one movie with a longer list of super likable actors than this one? I'd be hard pressed to think of one.

The only thing that sucks is that this is clearly a Christmas movie and here I am watching it in the middle of February. My bad.