So Much for the Stiff Upper Lip

Last night I went to see the British import "Love, Actually", with Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson. What an incredibly dumb and stupid movie it is! Hugh Grant was OK - there is a nice moment when he, as the British Prime Minister, basically tells the American President to go to hell (a very popular position in Britain these days) - but the movie's concept is so idiotic that nothing can save it.

Apparently the screenwriter had noticed how pleasant the scene is at London's Heathrow Airport, when long-separated people see each other again, and hug and kiss. That's OK, for a 15-second movie. Then introduce lots of first and second-rate British actors, many of them gorgeous but vapid, and link all these people we don't care about with many, many, various inane love stories, and have "I Love You" romantic moments, over and over and over again, like an endless Heathrow Airport receiving line gone haywire, or a Paul McCartney inspired "All You Need Is Love" computer virus (or its sister virus "Silly Love Songs") replicating itself in a Darwinian frenzy across the Internet, for 2 1/2 excruciating hours. Awful doesn't even begin to describe the experience.

It didn't help that we had come into the theater halfway through the movie. At the movie's end, I thought it was the worst movie I had ever seen in my life, but then we stayed to see the beginning of the movie, and I saw that Hugh Grant had actually had some nice moments. So, among the worst ever, probably better than "Last House on the Left", or various Wes Craven nightmares, but not much better.

Computers and romance - a bad combination!

PROGRAM IWUVYOU
DO 10 I=1, 5000000000
WRITE(6,*, ERR=999)"I LOVE YOU!"
10 CONTINUE
GO TO 1000
999 WRITE(6,*)"YOU JERK!"
1000 STOP
END

There, don't you now feel ever so much more loved?