I finally saw 'Love Actually' and I didn't love it, actually

There are a handful of movies that "everyone" has seen that I have studiously avoided. Usually it's because the genre or subject matter doesn't interest me (the Harry Potter films), but sometimes it's because I feel like the movie has become so hyped that it could never live up to the inflated expectations I'm inevitably going to have.

This conceit probably applies to Love Actually, the British ensemble romantic comedy I have repeatedly been told I "have" to see, more often than not by very attractive single women. I tend to be very responsive, as a rule, to what very attractive single women tell me to do -- but for years I haven't been able to bring myself to watch this cult classic, even though it's been streaming on Netflix for months.

Well, I finally bit the bullet and just as I suspected I didn't really think the movie was anything all that special.

Don't get me wrong, I am not someone who is turned off by the concept of a holiday movie -- I just like my Christmas themed films to have a little edge or nastiness to them (think Gremlins or National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation). And when it comes to romantic comedies, I struggle, because I feel like there's almost no suspense about how they're going to end so I typically find myself predicting scenes before they happen.

About 10 minutes into the movie, once the somewhat intrusive early-2000s score dies down, Hugh Grant, playing as he almost always does some variation of Hugh Grant, appears as the prime minister having a "meet cute" with an underling. As soon as the scene ends you know they're going to get together and there will be the inevitable class/status conflicts, misunderstandings and eventual reconciliation.

Love Actually

The movie attempts to fight that possible lethargy by over-stuffing the movie with tons of famous or soon-to-be famous faces. The effect becomes overwhelming around the time Laura Linney shows up.

Very few directors can deftly weave multi-plot movies -- Robert Altman was the master of it. But the director of this film, Richard Curtis, as Roger Ebert put it in his favorable review seems to be "working from a checklist of obligatory movie love situations and doesn't want to leave anything out."

That said, the movie has its virtues -- prime among them an utterly likable, charming cast populated by attractive and appealing actors like Liam Neeson, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Colin Firth, Emma Thompson and Keira Knightley -- just to name a few. They all labor gamely to keep the overlong movie from becoming too corny.

I enjoyed the moments of savage British humor. Bill Nighy is a riot as a washed up rock star trying to mount a comeback with a truly awful holiday song. And the subplot of Martin Freeman's character, performing as a stand-in in a sex scene, is genuinely amusing and original.

But the movie doesn't have anything to say to me. It's just a movie with cute British people acting extra cute and British. It veers into sitcom territory and never quite feels cinematic. The women are all openly longing to be loved, the men are all aloof until they aren't. And the music is always tugging at your heartstrings or telling you how to feel, depending on your point of view.

Now before I am assaulted, I understand that this a movie very close to a lot of people's hearts. I have more than my share of comfort food movies too, so I can respect that. But it's not a very good film.

And it might be fair to say that this harmless trifle ended up spawning a whole genre of awful ensemble romantic romps over here in the states (all those movies named after holidays), and that, to me, is unforgivable.