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Love Actually: iVillage DVD review

Starring: Hugh Grant, Martine McCutcheon, Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Keira Knightley, Liam Neeson, Laura Linney and Bill Nighy
Director: Richard Curtis
Running Time: 135 minutes
Certificate: 15
DVD Release: 19 March 2004
DVD Extras: Audio commentary with Richard Curtis, Hugh Grant, Bill Nighy and Thomas Sangster
Deleted scenes and storylines, presented by Richard Curtis
Music Video - Christmas is all around
Music Highlights, a selection of songs are introduced by Richard Curtis

What's it about?
Starring the cream of the British acting fraternity (Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, et al), Love Actually is the Christmas offering from the king of British romantic comedy, Richard Curtis. The story, based on the theme that love is all around, diverges into numerous sub-plots. These follow the love-lives of its various characters, from the Prime Minister (Hugh Grant) to the school-boy crush of an 11-year-old, all in the run-up to the festive season.

Is it any good?
If you like the world according to Richard Curtis, in which everyone in London lives in enormous loft apartments overlooking the South Bank, you'll like Love Actually. It's the trademark mix of funny and sad with several overlapping storylines and, although something of a curate's egg - you can get a little overwhelmed by all the emotional music - there's enough good stuff in here to make this film worth your while.

Hugh as the Prime Minister and Martine McCutcheon as his tea lady has been the most hyped of the stories. It is charming, but quite difficult to see where the actual 'love' springs from. Likewise, Liam Neeson's story about an orphaned boy could have been heart-warming but is actually sickly in an S Club Juniors kind of a way. There's the bloke from My Family going to Wisconsin (pointless); Egg from This Life looking gay but turning out not to be (disappointing) and Tim from The Office in a cute sketch about stand-ins (hard to know why it's there).

However, on the plus side there is a magnificent performance from Emma Thompson as a wife who suspects her husband of having an affair. In addition, Bill Nighy steals the show as an ageing rock performer and, best of all, Colin Firth acts out an utterly beautiful story of cross-cultural misunderstandings, which I could easily have watched a whole movie about.

Check your cynicism in at the door. Love Actually is most definitely a feel good film and you should find much to enjoy in here even if you occasionally feel like you've overloaded on the sugar.

Marks out of 10: 8

Buy it!
Order your copy of Love Actually for only £14.99 at Tesco.com

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