Christmas is a time for love….right?
That’s what I hear, anyway.
Sometimes that love comes with baggage. Sometimes it comes with just plain love.
Let’s take a look at two Christmas love stories.
Both great, but definitely on different sides of the world of love.
LOVE ACTUALLY (2003)
Written and directed by Richard Curtis
Remember when they used to make romantic comedies with 40 different stories going at once?
Oh yeah. They’re still doing that crap. And each one is worse than the last.
But Love Actually is where it all started (for better or worse) and it’s actually really, really good.
To summarize is almost impossible, but I’ll try a little bit.
Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) is making a comeback with a hit Christmas song based on Love Is All Around. He hates it, but rolls with the punches while he runs to the bank.
Meanwhile, everyone in London is in love.
Daniel (Liam Neeson after being killed in The Phantom Menace, but before being killed in Batman Begins and Chronicles Of Narnia) is trying to teach his young stepson about love while dealing with the death of his wife. J
ohn and Judy (Martin Freeman and Joanna Page) are body doubles for sex scenes. They simulate sex for a living and start to get feelings for each other. They’re great when they’re working, but aren’t sure how to cope with those feelings in the real world.
Colin (Kris Marshall) thinks British women are cold, so he decides to try to find a foreign woman.
Prime Minister David (High Grant) is single and slowly falling for one of his maids, Natalie (Martine McCutcheon). What will he EVER do about that?
Jamie (Colin Firth) is on a writer’s retreat and starts to fall for a Portuguese maid at the hotel. They can barely communicate at first, but soon learn that they don’t really need to use words.
That’s just a few of the plot threads going through this flick and, strangely, they all work. (The others involve Keira Knightley, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Emma Thompson, Laura Linney, Alan Rickman, Billy Bob Thornton, Elisha Cuthbert and, of course (in a small role), Rowan Atkinson.
Also amazingly, they all pretty much tie together by the end.
If you ever think that all silly romantic comedies are crap, check this one out. It was much better than I thought it would be and even gave me a bit of hope for love back in the day. I mean, in a movie sort of way.
THE REF (1994)
Directed by Ted Demme
Written by Marie Weiss/Richard LaGravenese
Just so you know I’m not totally full of love and happiness, here’s a little ditty that’s nearly love free.
Gus (Denis Leary) is a burglar whose partner left him alone. He’s forced to take a couple hostage in order to get to relative safety. Unfortunately for him, that couple is Lloyd and Caroline Chasseur (Kevin Spacey and Judy Davis). They’ve been married for far too long and they apparently hate each other’s guts. There’s so much pent up frustration between the two of them that even their son, Jesse (Robert J Steinmiller, Jr), hates them. A lot of it is the fault of Rose (Glynis Johns), Lloyd’s bitter mother, but Lloyd and Caroline share the fault, too.
The Ref is a darkly hilarious anti-romance in the same vein as The War Of The Roses. There’s so much vitriol spewed that it’s really hard to like any of these people.
But there’s something about them that’s so….real(?) that it’s hard not to identify with them.
Then, when the family comes to visit and Gus has to masquerade as their psychologist, things get even funnier.
While it has a semi-predictable ending (Yes, the line “Take me with you” is here), the movie still ends up being awesome. And Leary is in top form as, well…basically himself. If you ever hated him as an actor, you might actually love him here because he’s not trying to be someone else.
He’s just Denis Leary, who happens to be a cat burglar.
These two movies should get you in the mood for love for the holidays. Or in the mood to try to kill your longtime spouse. If you do that, though, you can’t blame me.
