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Love Actually
Universal Pictures


8.3

based on 42 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 106 votes
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MPAA RATING: R for sexuality, nudity and language

Starring Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Laura Linney, Bill Nighy, Keira Knightley, Martine McCutcheon, and Rowan Atkinson

This ultimate romantic comedy weaves together a spectacular number of love affairs into one amazing story. (Universal Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Comedy \| Drama \| Romance
WRITTEN BY:	Richard Curtis
DIRECTED BY:	Richard Curtis
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: April 27, 2004 Video: April 27, 2004 Theatrical: November 7, 2003
RUNNING TIME:	128 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	UK

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The movie's only flaw is also a virtue: It's jammed with characters, stories, warmth and laughs, until at times Curtis seems to be working from a checklist of obligatory movie love situations and doesn't want to leave anything out.

Variety Todd McCarthy

A roundly entertaining romantic comedy, Love Actually is still nearly as cloying as it is funny…its cheeky wit, impossibly attractive cast and sure-handed professionalism are beguiling.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

It's not so much the individual storylines that grab you, but Curtis’ unrelenting optimism. In the end, it's nice to know that love, actually, does conquer all.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Love Actually is irresistible. You'd have to be Ebenezer Scrooge not to walk out smiling.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Appealing and genial with plenty of solid laughs, and worthy of a recommendation for those who appreciate this kind of thing. Just don't expect material that's edgy, dark, or challenging. Consider Love Actually the antidote to "Mystic River."

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

It's a toasty, star-packed ensemble comedy in which a handful of lonelyhearts attempt, with some success, to come out of their shells, and it's going to make a lot of holiday romantics feel very, very good; watching it, I felt cozy and charmed myself.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

The biggest surprise in the cheery, delightful Love Actually is its lively, edgy, slightly blue sense of humor.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

At times soppy, sentimental and shamelessly romantic, at other moments bursting with clever barbs -- and now and then zooming in on something telling and poignant -- Love Actually is just about impossible to dislike.

Time Richard Schickel

Enough of Curtis' lovably crazed characters do succeed in finding love in all the unlikely places that you leave the theater with your heart humming happily. He has his dark -- well, darkish -- side under control. Which is to say that he is an Englishman, well practiced in masking pain and absurdity and descents into sheer goofiness with mannerly behavior, sly irony and stiff upper lips.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Provides enough happy endings to make the audience forget that romance and Christmas miracles don't always work out.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Reminds you of an elaborate Christmas card that tumbles apart with pop-up figures, silly/charming greetings and perhaps even a jingle. It probably cost more than the gift it heralds, and you can't help but laugh at the audacity of such an aggressively cheerful card.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Frequently funny, generally fizzy and occasionally piercingly perceptive about the price love exacts.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

Mind you, there's lots to like, if not love, in this London-set, star-studded comedy. Unfortunately, there's a little bit to hate, too.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

This is cloying, deceitful, and more or less irresistible.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

If you’re going to have your emotional responses shunted around like a gear stick, it might as well be by someone who writes dialogue as funny as Curtis does.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

The film is in one sense lifelike: in order to get the good, we have to endure the lesser.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The film is an audience-pleaser, but very calculated and far from Curtis' best work: His script will go to any lengths to be cute, and his direction tends to be overly broad. In the end, he wears us out with the sheer volume of witty and endearing characters.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

By far the best single performance in the film - and it is really, really terrific, utterly believable and moving - is by Emma Thompson. To the extent that there is genuine feeling in the movie that doesn't feel slickly manipulative, it's in the scenes involving her character.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Structurally, Love Actually is less like "Four Weddings" than it is "Scary Movie 3." Curtis throws every gag he can think of at the screen and the ones that don't stick, he throws again and again.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Overall, it pushes its "love is good" message with such insistence, so many cheery pop tunes, airport hugs, coincidences and teary smiles, that it feels like one long commercial. Surely love is a desirable enough commodity that it doesn't require such a hard sell.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Charming, if terribly overstuffed, vision of romantic London gridlock.

Slate David Edelstein

It's too florid, too calculated, too too. Here's my emotional declaration: I love Richard Curtis' work. But I can't help feeling that the Bard of Embarrassment could use a touch more shame.

Empire Caroline Westbrook

It’s a formula that works and, as crowd-pleasing mainstream Britcom goes, it’s a relatively solid, if flawed, entry into the genre.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Though it would be dishonest to call this an unqualified success, it would be churlish not to tip the hat to Love Actually's genuine charm.

Newsweek David Ansen

Alternately beguiling and bloated, witty and warmed over, smart and pandering. The majority is likely to swoon; the minority will squirm their way through it.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

Feels less like a brand-new movie than a greatest-hits compendium. It offers nothing new and instead makes do with presenting the warmed-over like something pulled fresh from the oven.

Film Threat Stina Chyn

A lot goes on in Love Actually. This over-abundance of human traffic is the film’s primary weakness. There are too many characters and not all of the stories are equally developed.

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

Sometimes complicated, sometimes incredibly simple, the film explicates or fawns over the human condition with occasional charm and poignancy but too often it's just cloying.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

There were times watching this movie when I felt I was being force-fed 30 pounds of crème brûlée. Which isn’t to say I choked on every minute: I chortled heartily at the thread about the comeback of the washed-up rock star (Bill Nighy).

Film Threat Chris Barsanti

Ultimately, when Love Actually pulls out all the stops, which it does at least three times during the final smorgasbord of climaxes, it can be well nigh irresistible.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

The movie grows more cloying and repetitive as it stretches well beyond two hours. Almost every main character boasts the same bashful, puppy-dog attitude toward romance.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Curtis ladles sugar over the eager-to-please Love Actually to make it go down easy, forgetting that sometimes it just makes you gag.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

When he isn't overreaching for absurdity, Curtis can write bouncy patter, but each character gets about 60 seconds before the movie jumps deck to the next love-seeker and the next moony pratfall.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Cloying as much of this stuff is, it's not cynical. Curtis seems genuinely convinced that love is all around. Far be it from me to say otherwise. We don’t speak the same language.

San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer

Abandons any pretext of sophistication for gloppy sentimentality, sugary pop songs and bawdy humor -- an approach that works about half the time.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

If you feel yourself glowing after Love Actually, you might be suffering from sugar shock.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

I would have hated Love Actually less if it had been a total, clumsy disaster; the problem is that Curtis does pull off some amazingly well-tuned moments, as well as some very funny ones.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

If listing the cast of Love Actually is exhausting, it's even more tiring to watch it.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

What's the message: that women must remain vigilant about poundage to keep husbands from chasing taut-thighed secretaries? That's a charitable Christmas thought.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

A romantic comedy-drama has to make sense, though, and Love Actually doesn't, actually.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

A patchwork of contrived naughtiness and forced pathos...The loose ends are neatly tied up, as they are when you seal a bag of garbage -- or if you prefer, rubbish.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Gets to be dislikable in its glib feelgoodness. The movie's many excellent actors do too much acting with too little conviction in scenes that rush through perfunctory setups to deliver pat payoffs.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.3 (out of 10) based on 106 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Michael J. gave it a10:
The occasional overdone moments are far outweighed by the heart touching warmth of this film. If you are looking for a deep dredging of of the human soul read Kafka or watch The Pianist. This is a light hearted reminder of some of the joy of life. And what's wrong with that? A good example of why one shouldn't listen to critics.

[Anonymous] gave it a9:
This movie has to be taken with a grain of salt. I mean I am an avid movie fan and I usually am pretty hard on films, however this is just a film of escape. It is very feel good. The difference between it and it's American cousins is that it actually includes some clever humor and isn't afraid to do so to such extent it receives an R rating. It is just fun and feel good and if it isn't your cup of tea, I suppose that is your right, however don't degrade the film for that reason. To each his own, but on merit, this film, compared to many of it's counterparts deserves more credit. It is just feel good fun, only done better than it normally is here in the States. Lighten up people.

Angela gave it an8:
I think most of these postings fail to take into consideration one of the prime motivations for going to the movies: escape. The film is, admittedly, fluffy but I don't know that Curtis was out to make Citizen Kane. It's a romantic comedy, a genre not particularly well known for its grounded realism. (And furthermore, why is it the case that only crushing hearbreak is considered "real"? Have none of you been in love?) Ultimately, I'm most disappointed in my peer-reviewers disillusionment. Perhaps this jaded perspective speaks more to your personal experiences than the film in question and I just think that's terribly sad.

Michael L. gave it a5:
I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances--Emma Thompson, Laura Linney and Bill Nighy among them. But, my God, what a maudlin mish-mash of overbaked optimism! I loved the film best when reality took over--which was all too rare: Linney's hopeless romance, Collin Firth walking away from his linguistically-challenged infatuation. Thompson's initial heartbreak. It was real, bittersweet, and true. When I had to suffer through yet another bumbling romantic performance by Hugh Grant (who, besides Americans, would elect someone this idiotic to their land's highest office?), a school play that looked like the finale of "American Idol", and a wedding that resembled the parade sequence of "Hello Dolly", I was actually angry. At its best, "Love Actually" is sweet and true and optimistic. At its worst--as it often is--"Love Actually" is manipulative, unbelievable, and just plain stupid. I think a 4 is a better vote...actually.

Colleen gave it a0:
I haven't seen anyone comment on this yet, but what message does this movie send to women? I will admit to enjoying parts of this movie, but felt overall that the message was very superficial, very lame, and very dangerous. The writer seems to think that love is just about finding someone you like to look at, rather than anything else. The stories that ended poorly were not about people unwilling to take a risk as another reviewer mentioned. The stories that ended poorly were really because of a lack of respect and communication--something this movie lacked as well, given that the scenes were 5 minutes per character at a time. The writer seems to forget that love is how you feel *and* how you treat someone else--he captured the first part, without concern for the second part at all. I have heard high school gossip that captures real love better than this film.

Ilze S. gave it a 5:
Not as good I expected, but enjoyable. I think that other romantic comedies are much more interesting. Thats all!

Bob S. gave it a 9:
It is a wonderful feel good movie that will have your heart achy for a relationship and those that think it was a bad movie most likely have given up on love or felt like love has cost them something.

Love Actually Universal Pictures

Love Actually
Universal Pictures