LUV ACTUALLY: Jesse Walker writes (my comments in itals):

You left out the two worst things about Love Actually:

1. You know those syrupy climax scenes that weigh down the endings of every romantic comedy these days? This movie *opens* with one, and then it keeps bombarding you with them *all the way through the movie*.

[Oh, yes! Yes! Exactly!!! –E]

2. In the middle of all that crap, the subplot about Bill Nighy as the aging singer is actually funny. So you find yourself recommending things like “Tape it, then fast-forward through 90% of it,” and people just look at you funny.

[Ehhh… I liked the Nighy subplot for a little while. Then it started feeling just as predictable as everything else. (I called the fat-manager angle less than halfway through the movie, I think; and felt cheated on the denouement there.)–E]

(Aside from Nighy, the other reason to watch it — though this applies only to foreign-policy obsessives — is to see how mainstream Brits have apparently gotten over the empire entirely, given that the movie treats the country as one big small town. The imperialists are those beastly Americans, ther country run by someone who somehow gets to be Bill Clinton and George W. Bush at the same time.)