love actually: when there are so many reasons, why is it i can't stop liking hugh grant???

Love Actually: romantic comedy

i have disliked many a less worthy person. for instance, maggie gyllenhall. and all she does is twist up her neckbone for the camera and be very good in secretary. hugh grant has medium dubious proclivities (though a., i don't know the full story with the prostitute thing, and b., i don't know his life--call me underprincipled, but i don't think it's particularly fair to judge someone based on stuff about his or her home life that i really have no right to know), and he thinks that if he just sings almost in tune and dances inappropriately he can get away with no real characterization--he caricatures himself (hugh grant plays hugh grant) at this point at all moments available. and yet i don't hate him. AAUGH! WHY??? roguish charm, a twinkle in his eye, the sense that he knows whether you're naughty or nice...he appears to be in my mind the romantic lead equivalent of santa claus. also he angsts well.

anyway, the disturbing conundrum of hugh grant aside, i hated this film because i couldn't take my eyes off it. it pulled me in with its sappy sappy sappiness--the idea seemed to be, "if we twist various romantic comedy set-ups together enough times, we'll wring out the most romanticest comedy possible"--wrung me out accordingly, and hanged me up to dry like in the cold war kids song. i hate it when movies do this--hate hate hate. i hate it when they cut corners and don't give full characterizations and allow cute situations--or trite situations (c'mon, rickman-thompson plot, just give us a clue as to what's going on--we're rooting for you, really we are; we like your actors; just one hint, one little hint as to who these characters are supposed to be aside from alan rickman and emma thompson in a fat suit)--and attractive people to do the work of their storytelling for them. and i hate it more when they don't acknowledge that they've done it. with american romantic comedies (america! fuck yeah!), you know that what you're watching is a steaming pile of fecal matter, so you sort of sit back and allow the evil to happen (which doesn't sound unfamiliar as a strategy in american life in general [ooh, social commentary by the sra--much may it mean, meaning gods!]). but love actually makes a pretense at meaning something, and falls so short it doesn't even have to worry about minding the gap cuz it's not yet in the station (burn! [??]).

and, again, who sat screwed up like a romantic dishtowel? who was right where the movie wanted her to be? who, if she had such habits, would have found some juicy hangnail to tear at, waiting in agonies of anticipation for various happy endings? guess. that is the unkindest cut of all, definitely: that i got manipulated so hard and far. by something unworthy of my affections.

now of course i sound like a regency romance character, because think about what i'm admitting to: getting all involved in a movie that, whatever it made me feel, had nothing to offer me, nothing to truly give. it's a sterile, exhausting game of give and take. i start watching the movie and hence enter into a social contract with it, but not one in which i'm free like a 21st century woman: i have to let it do what it's going to, and my only real options are to disengage or to be taken for the ride. i mean, you could say, "for christ's sake, woman, it's just a movie. it entertained you, didn't it? what more do you want?"

but i can say in return, "i want to be entertained by something that doesn't hate me--something that doesn't mistake my emotions for points on a chart thingee (triangle graph?) that symbolize earned revenue, that doesn't grossly pander to my own sick proclivity for separating emotion from content. if the true fantasy here is that emotion does somehow cleave to content, let me live in that fantasy. let me believe that my feelings have something within me causing them, something that passes show, as opposed to being a cleverly formulated series of chain reactions to a chain series of stimuli that could, really, as is proved by this movie, come almost at random."

i guess what i'm trying to get at is, romantic comedies should not use government-funded algorithmic research to create ridiculous plots for their own nefarious uses. it's wrong. it's bad. and it's happening all around us.