“Love actually IS all around.”  This is such an appropriate statement, which especially rings true around this fast approaching holiday season.  The movie Love Actually gets my highest praise as one of my all time favorite romantic comedies.  Full of smiles, laughs, and even some good old fashion heart ache, this movie leaves you with such a fulfilling feeling of warmth and happiness…and who doesn’t want to feel this way around the holidays?

Love Actually’s star studded cast includes Hugh Grant (and what movie really is a romantic comedy with out him?!), Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Laura Linney, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Keira Knightley, Bill Nighy, and Rowan Atkinson.  Complete with British accents and a Christmas-time setting, this movie is a collage of nine different love stories that overlap and interact with each other.  There’s the burnt out and bitter singer and his agent, a young couple’s first months of bliss complicated by a third wheel, a busy housewife who feels her husband slipping away, a pair of nude movie body doubles who find love in an unexpected place, a cheated writer who falls for his Portuguese house maid, a widowed step-father helping his son with his first love, a single chap who finds happiness in Wisconsin, a selfless sister who gives up the love of her life, and finally the single Prime Minister who falls for his secretary.

First off, I love the screen writing and direction of Love Actually.  It’s not just about one love story; the movie gives you nine different accounts to follow.  The movie jumps from story to story, but not in a confusing way.  The viewer can easily follow the love accounts, even when the characters from different stories interact and overlap in their story lines.  For example, the mischievous receptionist in love with the family man is friends with the third wheel from the newlywed couple, and the wife of this straying family man is the Prime Minister’s sister.  It’s these subtleties of cross involvement that tie the whole story of LOVE together.

I also love the story lines themselves.  The movie was cleverly written to make you laugh at certain characters, deeply feel for others, and love and envy a few special characters along the way …a perfect mix in any romantic comedy.  There’s even one moment, when the unappreciated housewife opens her Christmas gift from her husband, that I actually have to catch my breath because I feel my heart sink and ache for a few seconds.  (Part of this feeling I’m sure is due to good writing and acting, but I’ll admit the other part is because I’m a single sap who gets way to into hopeless love stories!)

Finally, I love the music chosen for Love Actually.  From the scene opening favorite, “Love is all Around” (altered with a Christmas twist of course), to the movie ending with a Beach Boy classic “God Only Knows,” the movie plays a hit list of love and Christmas songs…complete with a crowd pleasing version of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” (which deserves high applause because if you are a twenty-something female, there’s no reason why this wouldn’t be your favorite Christmas song of all time!)

Love Actually gets my highest rating!  This is a romantic comedy that I can watch over and over again and never get tired of Hugh Grant in his usual character role!  This movie makes me laugh and cry.  It gives me hope that romance is not lost, and that love can be found in many different ways and places…that “love actually IS all around.”  I like to watch this movie year round, but since Christmas happens to be my all time favorite holiday, and the movie is set at Christmas time in England, I find it in my DVD player most often around this time of year.  I highly recommend Love Actually as it is actually a brilliant movie to get lost in for two hours.  And for only $7.50 at amazon, you can’t go wrong!