She quickly gives him her number once outside the eatery. There he encounters an American named Mary ( Rachel McAdams at her most infectiously fetching) who is mad about Kate Moss, prattles on about her too-short bangs while referring to them as "fringe" and will be revealed to have quite good taste in stylish frocks.ĭuring one of Curtis's typically untypical romantic meet-cute interludes, he has the pair first run into one another during what amounts to a literal blind date at an actual restaurant named Dans Le Noir, where patrons dine in complete darkness and are served by sight-impaired waiters.įor Tim and Mary, it's a case of like at first unsight after a server decides to seat them together along with their less-than-a-perfect-match friends. After fixing a disastrous New Year's kiss situation but failing to convince a comely summer visitor to give him a chance, he gets serious about his settling-down pursuits after moving to London.
Once he is over the shock, Tim decides to concentrate on using his newfound ability to improve his love life. Or as Nighy puts it, "You can't kill Hitler or shag Helen of Troy." That Tim tends to go into a Narnia-esque wardrobe to begin his detours into the past adds a quaintly homey touch that is light years away from Star Trek or even H.G. One major caveat: You can only revisit and revise portions of your own life.
That the news is delivered in the most charming off-handedly fashion by his father in the form of Nighy, who never fails to amuse at the very least and astonishes almost always whenever he is onscreen, undercuts the questions that nitpickers might have about the process. Not that you would know it from the young Irish actor's last big role, the somber, bushy-bearded landowner Levin in last year's "Anna Karenina." Here, though, he is slightly more grounded than Grant (and his copper hair color provides fodder for ginger jokes, an Anglo staple) as Tim, a lawyer-to-be who is gobsmacked to learn at age 21 that the men in his wealthy family of eccentrics share the ability to go back in time. But the filmmaker has found a perfect replacement in the abundantly beguiling presence of Domhnall Gleeson, the son of Brendan Gleeson of " In Bruges" and Mad-Eye Moody fame. At 53, Hugh Grant-a former mainstay-has matured far beyond impersonating fluttery-eyed fumblers in the throes of courtship. To experience it, you just have to allow the analytical parts of your mind to unclench during the dodgier bits of business-all these pasty well-off people and their problems, oh woe is them!-and go with the feel-good flow.Īnd so I did until the last third or so with "About Time" and began to especially admire the often-impeccable casting in movies that feature Curtis's handiwork.
Bean-an enterprise that is essentially Jacques Tati's Monsieur Hulot for dummies-and his unwatchable second directing effort, " Pirate Radio," that saw the likes of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Bill Nighy (Curtis's go-to secret weapon of mass appeal) go down with the ship amid much sleazebag behavior.īut during the course of being seduced by his current paean to the power of love and its underlying message to simply live each day as if it were your last, this thought occurred: Something about Curtis's films allow cinematic endorphins to be released into the brain and generate a state of euphoria that is akin to absolute bliss. I do draw the line, however, with his efforts with Mr.
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Of course, " Love Actually," his 2003 directorial debut, is a towering multi-layered masterwork that fairly oozes gooey woo and has grown into an annual Christmas TV tradition with its parade of befuddled Englishmen in varying stages of amorous yuletide desire.