– Customer review on 18/02/2010

Love Actually, is a film about just that... Love, in all it's various guises and on a multitude of levels. This is a compelling and very subtle film that argues quite rightly that there is a great deal of love in our world despite the appearance of hate and greed and general malevolence in the media and in most of our lives.

Hugh Grant's character - a politician learning to lead a nation through difficult times and to simultaneously, in the face of that immense duty, accept his own, personal right to love, is an excellent centerpiece for this Robert Altman-like story of multiple viewpoints and experiences.

There are scenes of extreme poignancy and delicacy that will delight the careful viewer...

One previous reviewer for example, talked about the Rickman character's secretary undressing and questioned why such a throw-away scene was added... Notice the lingerie she wore... the way a woman will wear something special when she expects intimacy and the very human, disappointed look she has on her face even though she is an unrepentant vamp on a mission seemingly to destroy a man's happy, little life... It is that sort of moment that truly MAKES this film work so well. It shows another level of love/lust/affection/desire... it is a brilliant portrait of a woman's reality too often skipped over in Hollywood's rush to tie up characters and plotlines into neat little archetypal packages... She can be both vamp and feel pain...

Just as it is the young boy's reality that he is in love! Liam Neeson does an amazing job representing the man every boy wishes was his father... who honors and cherishes his son's first, perhaps greatest love, as something every bit as real, lasting and meaningful at the tender age of eleven as it might be at age fifty!

This film is meant, I believe, to show the presence of love... everywhere... amongst porn stand-ins, amongst the uncouth and obnoxious, amidst the timid and the dutiful, the mentally challenged and the young and beautiful... it succeeds brilliantly at this.

A great date film and wonderful romantic comedy, I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone willing to truly see a story that captures the pain, glory, joy, inconvenience and soul-destroying beauty of love.