Barnes & Noble
It's not easy to craft romantic comedies with ensemble casts, and few filmmakers have done so as well as screenwriter Richard Curtis, whose credits include Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Bridget Jones's Diary. For Love Actually, his directorial debut, he has composed a comedy of symphonic proportions, a surprisingly sprightly romp that boasts a dizzying array of characters connected in unpredictable ways. The story is set in London during Christmas, as the newly elected prime minister (Hugh Grant) takes office and immediately falls for a working-class staffer (Martine McCutcheon). Meanwhile, his middle-aged sister (Emma Thompson) is beginning to worry that her husband (Alan Rickman) might succumb to the blandishments of a sexually aggressive coworker, while elsewhere in the office Laura Linney pines for hunky Rodrigo Santoro. On other fronts, a recently minted widower (Liam Neeson) struggles to raise his adolescent stepson, and Colin Firth rebounds from heartbreak by falling for his non-English-speaking assistant. Stringing the whole thing together is the film's best story line, which involves an aging, dissipated rocker (Bill Nighy) who records a corny Christmas song that becomes an unexpected holiday hit. As one expects with Curtis, the script is fairly literate and refreshingly free of tacky humor. Which is not to say that Love Actually doesn't have its ribald moments; in fact, it's probably the lustiest picture Curtis has done to date. Still the characters are generally likable and the movie brims with wonderful bits: Rowan Atkinson, for instance, contributes a quietly hysterical turn as a prissy department-store clerk. In the vast rough of romantic comedies, Love Actually is a genuinely witty and enchanting diamond. Ed Hulse
Barnes & Noble
Renée Zellweger packed on the pounds once again to play the pleasantly plump protagonist of Helen Fielding's bestselling novels in this delightful sequel. Some viewers didn't find Edge of Reason quite as funny as Bridget Jones's Diary, perhaps because Bridget's fate -- romantically speaking -- is never in much doubt. However, the sequel is richer in incident and offers Zellweger's character more expansive opportunities to make a fool of herself. The story opens with Bridget working on a popular TV show while she's happily involved with diplomat Mark Darcy (Colin Firth). But after they have a fight over practically nothing, she impetuously decides to accept an assignment that takes her to Thailand, where she runs into former employer and erstwhile cad Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) and winds up in prison on a drug-smuggling charge. Even in her most hapless, dimwitted moments Bridget remains an appealing young woman, thanks largely to Zellweger's skill in making her believable and sympathetic. She isn't the first person who's made a wrong turn on the road to love, and even at her most foolish she retains an endearingly girlish charm. Grant and Firth repeat their characterizations from the first film with uncanny fidelity, although we personally think that getting them into another brawl over Bridget is a bit of a stretch. But this is Zellweger's movie all the way: she makes us love her even when she's embarrassing herself horribly, and that takes some doing. A lesser actress would never be able to pull it off with such aplomb. Ed Hulse
All Movie Guide
Can a beautiful and internationally famous American actress find happiness with a frumpy British bookstore clerk? She can -- at least for a while, it seems -- in Notting Hill. William Thacker (played by Hugh Grant) is a bookseller at a shop in the Notting Hill district in West London, who shares a house with an eccentric Welsh friend, Spike (Rhys Ifans). One day, William is minding the store when in strolls Anna Scott (Julia Roberts), a lovely and well-known actress from the United States who is in London working on a film. She buys a book from William, and she is polite and charming in the way a famous actress would be with a star-struck sales clerk. Their relationship would logically end there, if William didn't run out a few minutes later to buy some juice. While dashing back to the shop, he bumps into Anna on the street, spilling juice all over her blouse. Since he lives nearby, William politely offers to let her stop by his house to clean up; since William seems harmless enough, Anna agrees. When Anna has to stop back to pick up a bag she left at William's house, they kiss -- just in time for Spike to show up. A romance slowly blooms as his friends and family (not to mention the world at large) wonder out loud what he's doing dating a movie star. Notting Hill reunites Hugh Grant with producer Duncan Kenworthy and screenwriter Richard Curtis, who previously worked together on the international hit Four Weddings And A Funeral. Mark Deming
All Movie Guide
London's most frequently eligible bachelor gets some lessons in growing up from a maladroit 12-year-old boy in this third big-screen adaptation of a Nick Hornby novel, directed and co-written by siblings Chris and Paul Weitz of American Pie fame. About a Boy concerns the parallel coming-of-age stories of the thirtysomething Will (Hugh Grant), a layabout "serial nice guy" living a posh, carefree lifestyle off his deceased father's fortune; and the preteen Marcus (Nicholas Hoult), a bright but awkward youth who's tired of his mom Fiona's (Toni Collette) depressed, boyfriend-less state. Their paths collide when Will, deciding that single mothers are the easiest romantic conquests on the dating scene, fabricates a two-year-old son and joins a group called S.P.A.T. (Single Parents Alone Together). Marcus is wise to Will's scheme, however, and through some incessant pestering and blackmail, he contrives for Will to date Fiona. Though Will doesn't hit it off immediately with either Marcus or his mother, he gradually begins to open up to the people around him -- so much so that he attracts the attention of another attractive single mom (Rachel Weisz). A U.S./U.K. co-production of Robert DeNiro's Tribeca Films and Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner's Working Title (the company responsible for the Grant-related Four Weddings and a Funeral and Bridget Jones's Diary), About a Boy was co-written by What's Eating Gilbert Grape creator Peter Hedges. Michael Hastings
loading...
© 2009 All Media Guide, LLC