LOVE ACTUALLY: one-upping Uncle Sam in the rom-com stakes

Ok, let's get the negatives out of the way first so we can have a grown-up conversation about this film.
I admit that LOVE ACTUALLY is undeniably sentimental and sugary. I could feel it chipping away at the enamel on my teeth and furring up the walls of my arteries. It's not the first rom-com to suggest that love is the answer and that all you need is love but it does so more nakedly and unashamedly than many of its predecessors.
It's nothing more than an implausible fairytale in modern garb where the men are more often than not the ones in distress and it's the damsels who ride to the rescue.

So, with these minuses duly noted and acknowledged I now want to make the case that LOVE ACTUALLY is a really good film. It's not a great film or a classic but it is a lot of fun. The two main reasons for this are writer-director Richard Curtis' genuinely funny script and the engaging performances from a veritable who's who of British acting talent circa 2003.
Among the stand-outs are Bill Nighy in a career boosting turn as an addled rock star making an unlikely chart comeback with a truly awful Yuletide song called "Christmas is all around us" (based on the almost as awful "Love is all around us"), Hugh Grant dithering magnificently (but keeping his fluttering eyelids in check) as the British Prime Minister, Colin Firth as the epitome of the too-nice-for-his-own-good English gent, and Liam Neeson as a newly widowed dad channeling his grief into supporting his young step-son's difficult encounter with first love. Honorable mentions go to Emma Thompson, Martin Freeman, Laura Linney, Andrew Lincoln and Alan Rickman and I could go on, there's really not a bad performance in the entire cast. Even Rowan Atkinson acquits himself well!
With a cast this big and numerous storylines to cover there's not a lot of time for depth so it's to the immense credit of the cast and Curtis's scriptwriting skills that in the short time we get to spend with each of the characters they get to feel like something approaching real people. It's true that we only get to see one aspect of their lives - their love-life - but it's done in such a way that we feel there's more to them than simply their issues with romance.
What makes LOVE ACTUALLY a determinedly British take on the romantic comedy genre - even more than the predominantly British cast and the fact that it's set in London - is the humour. The mix of sarcasm and self-deprecation is uniquely British and allows the male characters in particular to act like an idiot at times without becoming pathetic buffoons. I got a sense of Curtis - his focus fixed very firmly on the other side of the Atlantic - stating confidently "This is how WE make rom-coms, and our style is just as valid as yours!" If that's too subtle for you just look at his depiction of the American President (a cameo by Billy Bob Thornton) as a shifty, immoral bully, and the portrayal of beautiful young American women (those from Wisconsin anyway) as brainless bimbos eager to jump into bed at the first sound of an English accent no matter how ugly the owner. The sub-conscious message seems to be "we may be nitwits but at least we're not Americans."
Heartwarming, life-affirming and seriously funny in places I think LOVE ACTUALLY has the pedigree to become the British version of "It's a Wonderful Life" - the film without which an entire nation's Christmas celebrations aren't complete.

CONFLICT: more fighting off-screen than on

If you ever imagined that actors were oblivious to the awfulness of a film they were making and it's only us critics with perception powerful enough to recognise a turd when we see it, then you need to read pages 228 to 233 of Rudy Behlmer's 1985 book 'Inside Warner Bros.'
These pages contain the transcript of a May 6, 1943 phone call between Warner Bros top star, Humphrey Bogart, and studio boss Jack Warner on the subject of CONFLICT. Bogey is pleading with his employer to be released from his obligation to make this film. This is just a sampling:
"I am more serious than I have ever been in my life and I just do not want to make this picture."
"Nothing you can say will convince me it is a good picture, or is in good shape, or for me."
"It is not any good. It is not constructed for me and no thought has been put into it."

In attempting to persuade his recalcitrant star to make the film, Warner alternates between talking it up "In my opinion, from a professional standpoint, this picture.... will be one of the important pictures, because it is so different from anything that you or we have done" to virtually conceding that Bogart has a point "In this business you can't always take the apples off the tree, you have to take some of them that are on the ground" although he denies Bogart's assertion that he (Warner) is admitting "that this is a rotten apple."
Despite Bogart protestations, he made CONFLICT  and while it's certainly not a rotten apple it doesn't do much for his image or reputation either. Bogart clearly had a far better idea of his screen persona than his studio did and he was 100% right to insist that the role was not right for him. It's difficult to understand what Warner Bros were thinking when they cast him in a part that was so at odds with the tough, principled, highly individual characters he'd played with enormous success in 'The Maltese Falcon', 'Casablanca', 'Action in the North Atlantic' and 'Sahara.'
Architect Richard Mason is a scheming, mentally disturbed psychopath who murders his wife when she gets in the way of his lust for her sister and then goes mad when she apparently returns from the dead to haunt him. This is not the Bogart the public had come to love nor was it even an 'interesting' change of direction. Mason is an implausible, one dimensional figure lacking in any kind of appeal. Bogart was far too professional to give a deliberately bad performance but he's obviously struggling to find anything in the script that can help him to make Mason a credible character.
CONFLICT is somewhat kinder on Bogart's frequent 40s co-star Sydney Greenstreet. He's far better suited to the role of family friend and wily psychiatrist Dr Mark Hamilton who figures out what his best friend is up, and he brings a grace and sophistication to the project that it really doesn't deserve. The one real pleasure to be derived from this film is watching Greenstreet in action, effortlessly dominating every scene he appears in without once overshadowing Bogart.
As a thriller CONFLICT is disappointingly flat, unconvincing and anything but an 'important picture', but as a lesson in how a big studio can totally mishandle it's biggest star this film is priceless.