“Love Actually” is the latest offering from the batch of romantic comedies that seem to float across the pond at Christmas time, and as much as you want to hate this one as you wanted to hate the others, “Love Actually” delivers a perfect holiday movie.

Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth and Alan Rickman head up the star-packed cast. Richard Curtis is the director whom you will remember from “Notting Hill,” “Bridget Jones’ Diary” and “Four Weddings and a Funeral.”

Yes, it is set in England, and yes, everyone talks funny. Hugh Grant is still as powerful as a limp piece of lettuce, but that’s why we love these movies right?

The movie consists of a number of different love stories that somehow get intertwined. There are stories of people falling in love, people falling out of love, people wishing they were in love, people thinking they are in love; All the way from the sleazy boss fooling around with his secretary, to the 11-year-old boy infatuated with an American girl in his school.

It’s not all sappy, unlike most movies in this genre. There are a fair number of laughs to be found. The couple who meet while having simulated sex for a porn movie have a fair few, but if your first introduction to someone is while you are both naked pretending to have sex, humor would seem a natural ice-breaker.

The language is as colorful as ever, but somehow the dirtiest of mouths seem all right when spoken with an English accent.

America does not go unrepresented. Billy Bob Thornton plays the President, a disturbing thought in the best of times, and turns out to be a slimy womanizer who is edging in on Hugh Grant’s interest.

There is the girl who spends day and night on the phone with her mentally disturbed brother when all she really wants is one night with the office hottie.

Not to mention the goofy, undersexed English lout that decides that if he is going to find a date, it will be in the United States, or more specifically, Wisconsin. Not to give the game away, let’s just say he ends up with more than he bargained for.

Unsurprisingly, everyone ends up getting exactly what they wanted for Christmas and there is a big climatic ending where it all comes together.

“Love Actually” is the perfect movie to take your significant other. If you are female, here is a sappy love movie your boyfriend will actually find funny. If you are male, your girlfriend will think that you are making a sacrifice to watch a “chick flick” and let you watch “Matrix Revolutions” next time.

So it’s time to get romantic. Snuggle down, get some popcorn and enjoy the pleasant side of humanity for a change, because as this movie so brilliantly proves, all you need is love, actually.