Too much propaganda

Totally disagree - not only did I find this added to the characters, and the plot, but I also think that the lack of such 'reality' (that a huge majority of people on this planet face) in most of our (that is, the proveleged few on this planet)lives, probably contributes to the perpetuation of this inequity.

I couldn't agree with you less.

Don't try to wrap people into a romantic movie and then suddenly beat them over the head with your political views.

Surely trying to help the extremely poor isn't political it's moral.

He couldn't stand up for himself. Even when his boss imposed himself on him while he was having a lunch date showed just how timid he had become.

The combination worked perfectly well for me. A wonderful film. Both the leads were terrific.

I agree with this view. I feel that the events in the last one third of this movie were not skilfully written into the story.

It would have worked a lot better if these issues had been raised at a much earlier point in the story. For them to be added in the story two thirds of the way in and then to go on and become the final climax of the film, seems ham-fisted.

We are used to all of the main themes in a story being introduced within the first third of the movie, but in this movie the 'main theme' seemed to be introduced only in the very last portion, as if it were 'tacked on' to 'trick us'.

I can see that the writer Richard Curtis may have tried to be clever by lulling us into a romance movie only to change its tone drastically in the last act. However, this didn't work for me and ultimately left me feeling unsatisfied - rather than feeling passionately, as it appears was the intention.

This movie started out promising to be really entertaining and interesting and devolved suprisingly into hammy sanctimony that was unbelievable as well as preachy and typically movieland leftism.

It sucked

Why does no one ever complain about the pro-gun lobby propaganda of action films? Oh yeah because it's right wing and only the right wing can complain about lefty pinko commies ha ha

People only ever complain about propaganda when they don't like the message of a film. If we were to take political propaganda out of films the likes of Schwarzeneggar and Stallone would never have had a career beyond a couple of films.

lel513, a very good film critique. I'm a little (not by much) less cynical about the insertion about extreme poverty. At least it didn't beat us over the head with the lie that Americans are racist and homophobic or some such nonsense. So I'm okay with it. The girl (Kelly Macfonald) is quite charismatic and perfect in this role (she's the voice of the heroine in Pixar's "Brave" by the way).

What's your definition of "propaganda"? It's a sad statement about partisanized political correctness (from the right), imho, if making factual statements about the incidence of child death from poverty in the world - and characters who spar over whether it's acceptable to compromise or not over a goal to eradicate such reality - is called "propaganda." It was actually a statement about two characters whose mutual instinct drawing them to one another unwittingly includes a shared sensibility about what is actually a moral issue, not partisan or propaganda.

And what's wrong with having a story that is also a romance involve someone who is actually in the inner circle of the upper ranks of global movers and shakers? Don't people involved in high level moral or political causes also have romantic lives?

Needless to say, it worked for me ... and for my husband. And it felt refreshing - that a film about interpersonal connection also took on the context of the global need for people to feel connected to strangers who are needlessly dying as much as to their loved ones.