Insult my manhood... now.
Entirely against my will and protesting the whole time, I assure you, I saw Love Actually last night. If you still respect me as a man, assuming you ever have, you will not after reading this review. You might want to click on over to the Bill Simmons archive for now and come back later.

Many of you are likely familiar with the Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs, a three-disc album featuring, you guessed it, 69 love songs. Stephen Merritt, the songwriter, covers just about every type of love you can think of: puppy love, lasting romance, unrequited love, people getting together, people breaking up, people throwing themselves into a torrid love affair they know won't last through morning... It's a towering achievement, and at least forty of the songs are good.

Love Actually is like the movie version of 69 Love Songs. I lost count of how many storylines there are. The whole thing is set up rather nicely at the beginning, with a voiceover by Hugh Grant observing the arrivals terminal at Heathrow airport. The visuals are some nice, home-movie looking shots of people greeting each other, and that sets the appropriate tone from the outset. You see young, attractive couples kissing; old people embracing; old friends shaking hands. And you see the love in all their faces. Unless you have a cold, dead heart, you're ready for some love, actually.

By the way, the title of this movie really irks me. Shouldn't there be a comma in there? Am I the only one who thinks that?

Grammar aside...
The writer/director, Richard Curtis, tries to juggle tons of characters, most of whom have at least a tangential connection. He is mostly successful. Some of the characters fall into or out of love a little too quickly, but that's a necessity if the movie were to come in under five hours. We've got Liam Neeson as a grieving widower and his surprising relationship with his precocious stepson, who has a love of his own at school; Hugh Grant as the new prime minister with a non-Clintonian crush on his aide (and the President of the United States, who has a decidedly Clintonian crush on the same aide); Laura Linney as the harried professional with a crush on her sexy, Italian coworker; some guy with a crush on Keira Knightley (Oh, Keira! Someday...), who has inconveniently just married his best friend; Alan Rickman as a middle-aged man who is tempted to cheat on his long-time wife, Emma Thompson; Colin Firth as a jilted lover who moves to France and meets a lovely Portuguese maid...

Seriously, that's not all the storylines, just the more major ones. There's also the geeky English guy who's convinced he can go to America and score with some fly American honeys (I'm still not sure if the resolution of his storyline was a dream sequence or not). It's a lot to take in, and some of the stories aren't resolved as well as they might be. Some are dropped entirely (what did happen with Laura Linney's character?), and some vanish for huge stretches of time (I'm pretty sure Hugh Grant doesn't appear in the middle third of the movie).

Still, what works in this movie works big, and I can't believe I'm admitting that. The whole storyline with Keira Knightley was expertly handled. Maybe I think that because it's the one I could identify with the most. After she discovers her husband's best friend is in love with her, he skedaddles and wanders through the city in agony to the strains of "Here With Me." I know it shouldn't have worked, but it did. Then he shows up at her house on Christmas Eve with several signboards, so that his buddy doesn't know he's there. His signs include several memorable lines, including "To me, you are perfect." What worked so well about this scene is that he tells her what he needs to tell her, and walks away, knowing he'll never have her. That's a good touch we don't often see in movies. What can I say? It got to me.

Breasts
There are moments like that sprinkled throughout. There's also a surprising amount of breasts, so if you're like me and want to pretend a girl is dragging you to see this movie, you can always use that as cover. "She's making me take her to Love Actually," you can say, "but at least I'll see some knockers."

I usually feel guilty when a movie makes me feel good. Movies are intended, I feel, to obliterate our senses and pound us into a vegetative state. Then something like this comes along and makes me feel entirely good about the world. Well, in this case, I'll hang onto it for awhile.