Movies - Love Actually

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	Movies - Love Actually

Love Actually is a romantic comedy film first released in cinemas in October and November 2003. The film was the directorial debut of successful English screen-writer Richard Curtis and features an ensemble cast including Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Liam Neeson, Alan Rickman, Bill Nighy, Keira Knightley, Martin Freeman, Emma Thompson, Andrew Lincoln, Laura Linney, Rowan Atkinson and Thomas Sangster.

The film received a British premiere in Leicester Square in London on 16 November 2003. There Curtis described his film as a "roaring rampage of romance" - a reference to the Quentin Tarantino movie Kill Bill
released around the same time with the tagline a "roaring rampage of revenge". The film, released two weeks earlier in the United States, had received a mixed bag of reviews including a particularly poor review from A. O. Scott of The New York Times. Defending the film at the premiere, Curtis said "I'd rather make a film that most of the audience liked and some critics didn't rather than a film that critics loved and nobody wanted to watch."

As of July 2005, Love Actually had achieved a US gross box office of over $59 million and a world box office of just under $245 million.

Taglines: It's all about love...actually and Love actually is all around.

Plot

The movie weaves a number of love stories together thanks to the relationships of the people within it. How the stories interact is quite complicated to explain. Below are summaries of each vignette. The film begins five weeks before Christmas.

Billy Mack

Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) records a Christmas single based on the Troggs classic hit "Love is All Around." Billy "promotes" his new single throughout the film despite his honesty in that it is a crap record. Additionally he promises to peform the song naked on television should his song become number one. He is constantly insulting his manager, who is played by Gregor Fisher. Billy's single manages to win the Christmas number one single contest. Instead of celebrating his victory at glamorous parties he ends up at his manager's flat. Christmas is a time to be with the people you love. Billy's manager is essentially his family and he gave up all that partying to get drunk and watch porn with a close friend. Strangely, the song is the same as that featured in Four Weddings and a Funeral, by the same writer.

Colin Frissell

Colin (Kris Marshall) after continually making blunders with women informs his friend Tony (Abdul Salis) that he will head to America and find love in Wisconsin. He feels that America, by simply being America, is filled to the brim with gorgeous women who will fall head over heels for him because, across the Atlantic, he will seem to have a charming accent that will make women swoon and fall into his bed. In a bit of fancy he finds four very attractive women in an average bar who invite him over for fun and sex. After his successful trip he brings back two of the girls, one for himself and one for a very surprised Tony.

Harry, Karen and Mia

Harry (Alan Rickman) is a manager at a design agency. Mia (Heike Makatsch) is his secretary, and she clearly has a thing for him. Harry's nascent mid-life crisis means he welcomes, tentatively, her attentions and he goes ahead and buys an expensive necklace for her (the jewellery salesman is Rowan Atkinson). Meanwhile, his wife Karen (Emma Thompson) is quite busy preparing for Christmas and the children's school pageant as well as helping her friend Daniel (Liam Neeson) after his wife's death. Karen mildly suspects something's up with Harry. Then she comes across the expensive necklace in his coat pocket, and delightedly assumes it is a surprise Christmas gift for her. She keeps quiet, fully expecting to receive the necklace on Christmas morning. So, when the gifts are given, it comes as a huge shock when Karen finds Harry has bought her a CD (Joni Mitchell) and the necklace is nowhere in evidence. She realises that he is involved with someone else and the necklace was destined for that person. Towards the end of the film, after the school nativity, Karen confronts Harry, who admits that he has been an utter fool.

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