Rating: 
Summary: Great Movie . . . Ugh! Except for Andie MacDowell!
Review: I can't believe this movie was a hit, unless I saw a different movie with the same title.
We are given the rare priviledge spending time around a bunch of shallow, annoying, whiney, vaccuuous people as they attend the titular events. Why we are meant to care what happens to any of them, we are never told.
The only character who is almost halfway likable is a condescending jerk (played by the normally very likable Simon Callow), and its his funeral in the title.
The only reason I went to see this was that Rowan Atkinson is billed as one of its main players. He is only in two scenes, and is even less funny than the rest of the cast ("Oh, he said 'spiggot' instead of 'Spirit,' I think my sides are about to burst.") Screenwriter Richard Curtis, who also wrote for "Black Adder," must have blackmailed him.
I think Americans who like this movie, and others like it (the Curtis genre), think that seeing it makes them really sophisticated. The joke is on them, however. Just before dying, the jerk makes fun of some Americans for not knowing Oscar Wilde is dead. The American who is ignorant of things British is one of the most tired cliche's in British "comedy." Many who laught at it, I'm sure, don't recognize a difference between types of Americans. We're all stupid, in their books. The ones who visit Britain as tourists or watch their movies and TV shows are the most visible to them. They like to take our money, as much as they seem to resent us.
Don't get me wrong. There is a lot of British stuff I like. I dream of one day visiting the Sceptre'd Isle. The Curtis genre, however, occasionally mocks Americans while pandering to a certain type of American, while the charcaters, but for their accents alone, are indistinguishable from the most boring types of shallow, middle-class Americans.
And seeing Hugh Grant in this movie caused me to wonder from under which rock he was found. The slime oozing off his body was quite obviously palpable to me. Why nobody else? Is this a hoax? Is everyone just pretending to like this guy for some reson? Even assuming he's good looking and all that, so what? There are lots of pretty boys, and some of them don't engage in marathon sessions of nodding and blinking. I think hundreds of actors could do just as well, if not better than him in most of his movies in I've seen. For a list of the few good movies he's been in, see my "Films with Hugh Grant that are Actually Worth Watching" in Listmania Lists.
After ten years, the bad aftertaste of this movie lingers on.
Rating: 
Summary: Not enough funerals
Review: If it's possible for a movie to be any worse, I don't know how. Oh, that's right... LOVE ACTUALLY!This meandering, pointless hodgepodge of unsympathetic and amoral characters in unbelieveable settings is a complete waste of time and film. And what was the ending about, anyway? Hugh and Andie agree to "not be married" for the rest of their lives? So, like, they're gonna just shack up for life? We all know that works soooooo well... see Hugh's non-marriage to Liz Hurley for details. One star, but only because I can't give it zero.
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