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LOVE ACTUALLY By Rachel Deahl Review Film Critic Click for the Official Site There are probably some amusing possibilities for satire in a film where Hugh Grant plays the British Prime Minister and Billy Bob Thornton appears as the American President, but neither one seems quite right in film "Love Actually," the new romantic comedy from first time director Richard Curtis. Curtis, who's known for penning enjoyable English fare like "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and "Knotting Hill," has some novel ideas running through his muddled romantic comedy, but the jokes mostly fall flat and the varied storylines never come together the way they should. Aside from its impressive cast - Curtis managed to coral most of the notable British actors working in film today (including Grant, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman and Colin Farrell) - "Love Actually" doesn't have the wit, which characterized the other scripts Curtis penned. Set in London a few weeks before Christmas, the film follows a varied cast of characters, who are intermittently connected, as they try to navigate their tricky love lives. Grant, playing a character curiously close to his off-screen persona, stars as an affable and intelligent playboy politician, newly elected to the office of Prime Minister, whom has a crush on one of his cute staffers. His sister (Thompson) is struggling with the possibility that her husband (Rickman) might be having an affair. Elsewhere in the film a comely fashion photographer struggles with his secret love for his best friend's new bride (Keira Knightley); a lonely American (Laura Linney) silently yearns for her attractive co-worker; an English novelist (Farrell) falls for his Portuguese maid, who speaks no English; and a stepfather (Liam Neeson) tries to help his son through his first big crush.
Littered with infectious pop songs and beautiful shots of London, "Love Actually" wallows in familiarity. The most enjoyable moments in the film come from Bill Nighy, who plays an aging rocker promoting his new corporate Christmas song. As Billy Mack goes on his unorthodox publicity tour, he relentlessly mocks his boy band competition, overweight manager and himself. Oddly enough Mack turns out to be one of the sweetest and most unexpected characters in the film. Less amusing, and more expected, is Hugh Grant dancing in his office to pop songs and Colin Farrell slaughtering the Portuguese language as he attempts to profess his love in the foreign tongue. Finally Curtis seems unsure what direction to take the film. As each storyline waddles along, the tales never gel in a rewarding fashion or offer any interesting characters. Attempting to remind us love is the only thing that ultimately matters, and that it's everywhere, Curtis' fractured stories do little more than offer up varied scenarios of love lost and found. Grade: B- Click for the Official Site The assumption about psychotics is that they will swear they're not crazy and, to their unfortunate detriment, appear even more insane with each denunciation. "Gothika" reminds us that bad psychological thrillers are also prone to their own form of denial. In this muddled and ridiculous Halle Berry vehicle, the filmmakers try to maintain logic by having their browbeaten heroine repeatedly announce what a rational person she is. The sublimation never works; with each announcement the film slips deeper into a mess of paranormal dribble and unintelligible psychobabble. Structured around an idiotic delineation of psychoanalysis that would make an episode of "Dr. Phil" look enlightening, "Gothika" begins by reminding us that sometimes denial is a necessary part of recovery. Shocking. Berry stars as the "brilliant" Dr. Miranda Grey, a detached shrink who counsels inmates at a women's' psychiatric penitentiary run by her husband (Charles S. Dutton). After a bizarre evening in which she has a strange encounter with a woman she nearly hits on a deserted road, Miranda wakes up to discover she's the newest inmate on her ward. Her flirtatious co-worker, Dr. Pete Graham (Richard Downey Jr.), arrives to tell her she's the chief suspect in the brutal murder of her husband. Miranda knows she didn't do it, but she can't remember what happened to her or where she was. As Berry struggles to maintain her sanity, she begins to unravel a mystery which links her own misfortunes to a series of paranormal activities involving a patient she once counseled (played by Penelope Cruz), who is now her fellow inmate.
Set in a dark netherworld we're told is Connecticut; the film takes place almost entirely within the eerie, gothic eyesore called the Woodward Penitentiary for Women. "Gothika" displays a world trapped in poorly drawn small town Americana. The seemingly quaint New England landscape that surrounds the foreboding institution is revealed in only two scenes, but we learn quickly that the residents are close knit and down home kind of folks - in an early scene in the sheriff instructs Miranda to avoid a road block by taking the bridge he and her husband fish off of. Later on this same kind of local good will is displayed when one of the prison guards tosses Miranda his car keys so she can escape. Of course it's gotta be small town USA when the missing inmate at the local penitentiary isn't nabbed tooling around town in the prison guard's Buick. Ultimately the juxtaposition can be chalked up to the problem with much of the film: sloppiness. Nothing quite fits together in "Gothika," from the characters who are thinly drawn and uninteresting to the plot that unwisely tries to meld a ghost story with a psychologically driven mystery. Furthermore, the pressing mind games at hand never delve into any remotely interesting questions about perception, sanity or the paranormal. Without any ground to stand on, the script is reduced to a barrage of unintentionally hilarious one-liners. In one scene Berry's desperate patient barks at Downey's skeptical doc, "I'm not deluded, I'm possessed." Maybe the creative team behind "Gothika" should try to do "Scary Movie 4" for their next project. GRADE: D
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