Love Actually is the next film in that unofficial series that includes "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and "Notting Hill". It is at once more expansive---being about 8 substantially separate love-studying plots that are loosely linked in a six-degrees sort of way---and yet it is also more shallow, as the effort is divided.
The six parallel sequences allow six views of love, really six studies: One thread studies the catastrophe of loving someone you can never have, another the angst of love for the 12-year-old-boy, another portrays the case of random, undeserved success with women, you get the idea.
It is very well written by Richard Curtis. (Even the ill-edited quotes on IMDB are emotive!) The cast is enormous, and mostly brilliant. One conspicuous "flaw" is Hugh Grant's character. He plays the new bachelor Prime Minister of Britain, and his character falls in love with a young woman on his staff. Unfortunately Hugh plays his usual character, a well-meaning but slightly floppy lad designed to appeal to women via his looks and his candid, lost manner, even when standing up to a sleazy and arrogant President of the USA. This cannot be a character in any way credible as a PM. In addition the dialogue confirms that he is supposed to be the usual age for a PM, yet he is not in the least made up to be older, not even a dash of gray in the hair.
Score? I would put it at 6.5, but it truly is very re-watchable, with lovely performances from the like of Emma Thompson and Liam Neeson, earning an upgrade to 7.5.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0314331/