Just got to see what I thought was a little romantic flick and turned out to be a film of epic proportions with a staggering cast and lots of really nice moments.

There’s a lot of stories to keep track of this movie that seem to be loosely connected, but they’re all worthwhile and offered me a point of entrance that invited me in to become part of these people’s lives. The basic theme is that there is alot of love in the world rather than the surplus of hate that gets all the attention and press. There’s a nice montage of shots in an airport of people not in the cast hugging and smiling as they express true joy to be reunited with husbands, wives, kids, relatives and more. The cool thing is that they are real people that were shot with a hidden camera left at Heathrow Airport for a week. The movie then gets into the cast of players expressing love in various ways both geat and small. Not everyone here has the ideal story or ending, but all have some warmth and affection in their lives whether from a son or brother, manager, best friends unobtainable newlywed wife, or actual future wife and husband.

It may sound kind of trite and I guess it sort of is, but the writing and acting is so good, the themes so universal, and the music stirring enough that I was really drawn in enough to forgive the fact that everyone was too good looking, a new bride is already thinking about future options and a best friend contemplating betrayal, or that much of the love the characters fall into seem to stem mostly from looks since few of them seem to actually know anything about each other before falling into it. But I felt bad when the movie ended. I wanted it to go on and continue to hang with a great cast that included Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Laura Linney, Kiera Knightley, and a bunch of other mostly English actors brought together from the same folks that made Notting Hill and Bridgett Jones.

It’s the kind of movie that made me walk and talk with the characters as I expressed similar emotions they expressed and rooted for them to work it out. My face was reflective of the screen as I cringed with the characters, laughed with them, gasped with them, cried with them, and all together went though a myriad of facial expressions as if living in the film as part of their lives. This is wonderful experience to have until the movie ends and you’re left alone without these people and the feeling they, along with the score, instilled in me. These include a belief in love, a hope of experiencing wonderful moments of coming together, the promise of finding acceptance and comfort with someone special, and the reality of people using profanity like bugger and arse.

There are those problems i alluded to above, but they are problems for a less novel mood. Sure these type of moments are subject to so many more practical things in the real world, which doesn’t let everything culminate on Xmas eve so majestically as they do here. This is especially true for people not so beautiful as the cast of the movie. In that vain I must pause here to say this, Keira Knightley…well…just wow! That’s all I’m going to say about that just now.

There’s a great moment when Hugh Grant’s Prime Minister gives a speech to the visiting U.S. President that is so what Tony Blair should have said to Bush 3-4 years ago and if he had he’d be a hero to millions. Of course it too could never really happen, and certainly not without party approval and consultation but it’s nice to live the dream for a moment. Between the more approachable lifestyle of a P.M., the humor, the language, the attitudes, and the dispositions of these people it made me seriously want to live in England again. I’ve wanted this before and i’ll probably want it again. Sometimes it just makes you wonder why we can’t be more like them since we are the descendents of England’s lunatic fringe population. Didn’t those Puritan’s have anything in common with the rest of England? Droll humor? Enlightened attitudes about life and sex? (Well yeah I know how far that one was off), I just want us to be cooler. Not exactly like them because I’m sure they have their issues. And I know this is just a movie and unlike one of the characters in it who leaves to come to America beacuse he thinks he’ll get more hot women due to American girls being turned on by Brits, and who actually has enormous success in this, I wont go to England and have movie moments declaring my love in an airport or crowded restaurant in another language i just learned, but I do want to go there and know the practical intelligence of Alan Rickman’s character, the laid back mourning and parenting of Liam Neeson’s, the cool politicking and classless lust of Hugh Grant’s Prime Minister, the aging rock star who gets away with over the top honesty in the media and is rewarded for it, and all the rest of these lovable Brits with their perfect features and lovable wit.

Love Actually is sort of a Robert Altman movie in love or Magnolia off the drugs. It’s long and with more stories than you can sometimes keep track of, but it made me feel good and want to do big things (as well as regret not taking the opportunities to be brave and bold a long time ago in a galazy far far away), and my main regret is that it ended. i hope the inspiration doesn’t end with it.