Newspaper savages Love Actually

The star-studded Love Actually - touted to be a blockbuster - opened in the US today to mixed reviews.

Love Actually was savaged by the influential New York Times as “an indigestible Christmas pudding from the British whimsy factory responsible for such reasonably palatable confections as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones’s Diary,” said the New York Times.

But the Associated Press critic said but it is “highly entertaining film you’ll be wearing a big, silly grin on your face.

The cast of the romantic comedy, starring Grant as a British prime Minister who falls in love with a young aide played by Martine McCutcheon, includes a star-studded line-up: Emma Thompson, Liam Neeson, Alan Rickman and Colin Firth.

But says the New York Time critic it is “ romantic comedy swollen to the length of an Oscar-trawling epic – nearly two and a quarter hours of cheekiness, diffidence and high-tone smirking – it is more like a record label’s greatest-hits compilation or a ‘very special’ sitcom clip-reel show than an actual movie.

Times critic AO Scott said Grant’s opening voice-over “establishes a new standard for bad taste masquerading as its opposite when he introduces this fluffy farrago, written and directed by Richard Curtis, with a reference to the World Trade Centre attacks.

“The film’s governing idea of love is both shallow and dishonest, and its sweet, chipper demeanour masks a sour cynicism about human emotions that is all the more sleazy for remaining unacknowledged.”

AP critic Jocelyn Noveck said: “There are far worse things that being pleasantly manipulated for two hours. Especially around Christmas.

“It’s unabashedly sentimental, premised on the relentlessly upbeat message that love is everywhere.

“You might be tempted to roll your eyes. But try not to, because then you’d have to take them off the screen. Keep them open, and chances are that at the end of this chaotic, somewhat manipulative but highly entertaining film you’ll be wearing a big, silly grin on your face."