Love Actually

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.