The Best Rom-Com?

 Another interesting topic today; Rom-Com's are very much something I tend to avoid, and for good reason. I don't think many of the are very good, even the ones that are highly recommended. So for me to say which is the best is something which is very hard, as surely even then it's not that good? Now I would be tempted to take the easy way out and say Shaun of the Dead which, while it is a rom-com ( Fact ) it does seem a bit cheat-y. However with Christmas round the corner I was recently reminded of one which I think is very good, very funny and something that you can easily to return to. 

Guessed it yet? It's got to be Love Actually for me, a brilliant film telling lots of interesting stories with brilliant amalgamation of them all at the end. Why is it so good though? Well there are two aspects it has to hit, 1) it has to be funny and 2) has to have a good story. For the most part this film is very funny, I think there is good humour across the stories however the stand out one for me is with Bill Nighy, every scene with that character is absolute gold, the height of the story being the TV interview around halfway through the film. The rest of the storylines also have brilliant laughs, which sometimes can be hard to think that they would given the nature of some of them. It also manages to keep the laugh's up throughout the whole story, which most comedy films fail at even today, stretching just enough jokes for the trailer that end up filling the first ten minutes of the movie.

So Love actually achieves a good comedy rating, but what about story. With so many different stories about the place it is hard to keep track of which is good and which you'd rather skip ahead. For the most part they are all really good, I've mentioned the Bill Nighy one, The Alan Rickman/ Emma Thompson line is also very interesting, bringing a rather sombre nature to the film, and the Hugh Grant one I also think is enjoyable. For me you could drop the whole Martin Freeman one to little avail, it doesn't add much for me and really just adds quite a crude nature to the film which was somewhat unnecessary. I  think when you add all these together by the end of the film you do have a very interesting time working out how they all fit together, and it becomes a much more enjoyable process than other romance films. But why so?

To answer I will simply look to another Rom-Com, The Notebook. Not a bad film at all but one which for me was not as interesting. The reason for me is that trying to develop a relationship which has a build up, sadness, happiness, more sadness, tragedy, regret and so on can get boring for two sets of character development where the whole film focuses on that one subject, like in the Notebook, and by the end you just want the two to get together because that's all the whole film has been invested in, and the ending can become almost inevitable. In this though, with so many characters to play with these emotions are spread out with a lot of different relationships to look at all with unique storylines that you don't have to spend too long looking at and therefore don't get dragged out too much for a whole movie. The Notebook does somewhat well to atone for this with a nice chunk of a war film slap in the middle, however is refreshing to see a romance film that can keep you engaged throughout by giving lots of stories that have good pace. 

Overall I think it is a classic Christmas movie, one that offers 2 hours of genuine entertainment and one which I would happily revisit despite its ominous genre.

Contains Frequent bad language and adult scenes.

My rating 8/10