Love Actually
Reviewed by Sarah Downing

In my opinion, Christmas is the perfect season for classic feel good movies. Every year, I find myself watching old favourites such as It's A Wonderful Life, Scrooge and Miracle on 34 th Street. Now, with his latest film Love Actually , Richard Curtis certainly appears to be making a conscious effort to fall into this much respected category.

With an all star, mainly British cast, this film uses a variety of stories interwoven together to send the message that love really is all around us.

As sickly as this may sound to some, I can assure you that Curtis uses his reliable romantic charm and good humour to create a movie that is completely heart warming and thoroughly enjoyable.

Admittedly, it's not entirely perfect and doesn't quite live up to the standards of Four Weddings and a Funeral or Notting Hill . Its main flaw being that Curtis seems to have taken too much on with his high number of separate storylines. As a result, a couple of these seem to be forgotten about and never actually get tied up at the end.

Other than this factor, the movie works incredibly well. It provides many memorable moments and, although it uses an extremely large cast, Love Actually successfully encourages you to care about most of them.

So, in response to my original comment, Curtis has succeeded in creating a wonderful Christmas film. I'm certain that within 135 minutes, you'll laugh, cry, and find yourself leaving the cinema smiling both inside and out. I can certainly guarantee that it will be appearing in my Christmas movie collection for a few years to come.