Leader of the rom-com empire

Hugh Grant is gibbering in the corner. Everyone keeps saying stuff like “bugger, wank, wobbly bits”. Everywhere you look minority groups (the disabled, schizophrenics, ethnic groups) are represented at levels which make The Guardian look like a Combat-18 unit pamphlet. There are trans-Atlantic couplings, weddings, seasonal festivities, singalongs and funerals, and even the latter feature Bay City Rollers tracks so the proceedings don’t get too heavy.

This is the Richard Curtis universe – a quintessentially English experience, but with an eager to please, readily accessible brand of humour and smoochy romance. For some, such a place is uncomfortably close to getting trapped at a trendy vicar convention, or in a room full of New Labour script doctors, but to date, the formula has propelled Four Weddings And A Funeral and Notting Hill toward box-office glory. Indeed when you factor in Curtis’ screenwriting duties on Bean and Bridget Jones’ Diary, then his projects have taken in over a billion dollars, meaning that there must be an awful lot of silent Hugh Grant fans out there.

Love Actually marks Curtis’ debut as a director – “It was the right time for me to do it” he explains, “because I’ve watched a lot of good people direct my films so I’ve got to the point where I had very specific ideas of how I wanted lines delivered, what actors I wanted to use, and particularly how I wanted the film to be edited.”

That proved an exceedingly difficult task however, for Love Actually is a fairly major directorial undertaking featuring 22 central characters and countless plotlines – “I got spectacularly unlucky as a first time director that I had written such a complicated film,” laughs Curtis, “Editing it was like playing a really complicated, three-dimensional game of chess. But on the plus side, the actors I worked with didn’t have time to see through me because every two weeks I was dealing with a whole new bunch of people.”

At least he was amongst friends. The film boasts several Curtis alumni, including Emma Thompson as a frumpy mummy whose husband (Alan Rickman) may be about to stray, and Curtis’ on-screen alter-ego Hugh Grant as a newly-elected, Blair-alike Tory PM. In another inspired piece of casting, Martine McCutcheon plays his tea-lady love-interest, but before you can crow the opening bars of ‘Wouldn’t It Be Loverly’ the harlot’s making eyes at the Clinton-derived, tough-talking womanising US president (Billy Bob Thornton) thus prompting an international hissy fit with Hugh blurting out British greats such as Shakespeare, Churchill and Beckham – to excruciating effect, if you don’t happen to be a fully paid up member of the Countryside Alliance.

Elsewhere in the movie, Keira Knightly and Chiwetel Ejiofor are tying the knot, Colin Firth is doing another Mr. Darcy character, and Liam Neeson struggles with bereavement. Basically, any possible variation on the rom-com recipe is thrown in for good measure in pursuit of feelgood, fluffy, Christmassy vibes. Imagine the Greatest Hits Of Rom-Com assembled into the one movie, and you’re about right. Curtis may have been the writer of the incomparable Blackadder, but there’s little edge on offer with this syrupy sweet confection. No surprise, then, that the reliably vocal audiences of New York have already sniffed at Love Actually, after it premiered there a few weeks ago.

Undeniably, they have a point. Few projects can carry off the multiplicity of narratives on offer here, and inevitably some parts of Love Actually are more developed than others. Bill Nighy’s ageing rockstar is a joy, while Lara Linney’s Miss Lonelyhearts character is introduced as “wanting lots of sex and babies with Colin” and then seems to completely disappear without satisfactory resolution. And any film featuring a cute, ickle orphan uttering lines such as “Come on Dad! Let’s get the shit kicked out of us by love” is going to have a natural constituency of detractors.

Those prone towards Scrooge-like tendencies, for example, should definitely give this a miss. In a manner highly reminiscent of the Victorian desire to cover up indecently naked table and chair legs (lest their girth cause young and excitable ladies to faint dead away), no head goes unadorned by a fluffy Santa Claus hat, the makers evidently having concluded that the mere sight of a functioning cranium would offend the audience and send them scuttling towards the exits.

Okay, this is somewhat sentimental fare, but it’s undeniably effective, even if there’a a bit of guilding the lily going on in the emotional punch stakes. Besides, Richard Curtis really isn’t bothered – “The film opens with an airport scene and I really do like places like airports.” smiles Curtis, “I find them really poignant – people saying goodbye and people welcoming their loved ones home. It’s an explosion of emotions. Now that may be a romantic view, but it’s also true.”. If you wish to argue the point, he’s got a billion dollars of box-office that says otherwise. And schmaltz or not, Love Actually will almost certainly prove that there’s plenty more where that came from.

Love Actually is released November 21st