What will I be trying to watch on May 25?

Why, the Red Nose Day, Actually broadcast, of course.



I know it's just a 10-minute film and likely to have all the depth of any cast reunion, but it's from Richard Curtis, and it's about Love Actually, so I'm unreasonably excited about it.

Of course, if I were back in London, I could watch it on BBC One tomorrow, but I'm not, so I can't.  Lucky Brits!

Time for a little lift from Richard Curtis

Courtesy of a song I love from a movie I love, despite its flaws.



Starting a holiday season with love is a good thing.

On About Time and beautiful sentiment

Richard Curtis, who wrote and directed this film, has earned the odd distinction of being the perfect sentimental movie writer/director for my taste.  (I'm sure he's thrilled at this honor.)  The previous two movies he directed--Love Actually and The Boat That Rocked--unabashedly mix humor and romance with heaping amounts of straightforward, heartfelt sentiment, and both are among my all-time favorite movies.  In About Time, Curtis again focuses on familiar targets, including romance and father/son relationships, again mixes humor and romance and sentiment--and again leaves me loving the result.

The key plot gimmick is a simple bit of pseudo-SF:  When a man in the protagonist's family turns 21, as the protagonist just did, he can travel back in time--but only to moments in his own life.  Later, rules appear, and the protagonist also gets a sense of the cost of time travel.  Over the course of the film, we watch as first his romance and then his life with a woman he loves unfold, and we also see his touching but always understated relationship with his father. 

The movie makes several key mistakes in its handling of time travel, though they all boil down to inconsistent application of the rules.  It also skirts a central issue:  Deceit--his use of time travel to manipulate things--is the very foundation of his relationship with his love.

None of that ends up mattering, though, at least not if the movie works for you, because the metaphor that time travel provides speaks to the very heart of the film, a simple message:  Enjoy every moment you're alive, and particularly enjoy the moments with the ones you love.

Stripped to its barest minimum, this message, like all profound ones, sounds dopey and obvious, but of course it never is, for few, if any, of us are capable of doing that.  I certainly am not.

More importantly, most of us don't go to fiction of any sort--films, books, comics, whatever--for the messages.  We go for the stories, the characters, the plots, the escapes.  The story and characters--all the key actors really deliver the goods--of About Time so charmed me and carried me along that I loved every minute of it, and it moved me deeply at the end, even though I was very aware that Curtis was expecting to move me.

If you hate his other two films, I'd guess you will hate this one, too.  If you don't know his work, though, or if you liked those movies, or if you're just in the mood for a beautiful film about love, both romantic and familial, then do not miss About Time.

Time for a sentimental song

I'm going to write later about the new Richard Curtis film, About Time, which despite its many flaws I absolutely loved.

For now, though, because it's been on my mind I'm going to share with you a version of the Waterboys song, "How Long Will I Love You," that in the movie a trio in a Tube station play.

I quite like this version.



I hope you do, too.

BTW, the film ends with a second version, the recent cover from Ellie Goulding.  If you want to contrast it to the one above, listen to this one.

Finally, a new Richard Curtis movie

Long-time readers may well recall that I am a stone Richard Curtis fan.  The two movies he's previously directed, Love Actually and The Boat That Rocked, are among my all-time favorites, films I watch at least once a year.  He's written so many wonderful screenplays that I couldn't reasonably list them all, but by way of example I'll point you to Notting Hill and the "Vincent and the Doctor" episode of Doctor Who.  Curtis wears his heart marvelously on his sleeve, and I adore his work.

On November 1 in the U.S., his latest film, and the third he's directed, will open.  Check it out.



I am unreasonably excited about seeing this movie.