I Concede. One of My Favorite Screenwriters Does Write Some Clunkers.

Hey! I know! Let's forgo dialogue altogether.

I've always loved the work of Richard Curtis, the man responsible for "Four Weddings and A Funeral", "Notting Hill," and "Bridget Jones' Diary." He writes memorable comic scenes and great characters and his most ambitious film "Love Actually" is our Christmas movie...the one hubby and I watch every holiday season because it's just so damn hopeful, feel-good and filled with wonderful performances and music. So I was a little surprised to see Richard Curtis turn up twice on Entertainment Weekly's 15 Nominees for Worst Movie Dialogue Ever, once for the line "I'm just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her," ("Notting Hill") and "Is it raining? I hadn't noticed" (from "Four Weddings and A Funeral").

His labeling as purveyor of the hokey dialogue made me watch this year's Christmas night screening of "Love Actually" with a more critical eye and what I realized is that although Curtis writes some hilarious dialogue, he also writes more than his share of on the nose, speaking the subtext dialogue that no one ever says in real life. In several scenes he slips in a line that is the "just for dummies line" that ensures that you get what's happening, if you say, got distracted for a moment thinking about Hugh Grant's hair.

Curtis is also fond of having his characters talk to themselves to show us what they're thinking, which is of course, a bit of a cheat and sometimes tough for an actor to pull off because he's got no one to play off of. The Colin Firth character in "Love Actually" for example sits down in front of his typewriter to work and instead of a dramatization of his loneliness, the character says to no one, "Alone again. Naturally." The dude in love with Keira Knightley says "Enough. Enough now," to himself as he walks away down cobblestoned streets to finish off that subplot. And the shy porn stand-in in an example of blatantly speaking subtext in a way that's out of character for her says to her guy on the first date, "All I want for Christmas is you."

It's interesting to me that the really good and the cringe-worthy can co-exist together. It's comforting to me. It's like a screenwriter I really adore sometimes doesn't get it right. He's capable of great brilliance and considerable mawkishness.

Perhaps it's just a question too of the genre. Of the 15 nominees for bad movie dialogue, more than half of them were from romantic comedies. Guess sometimes it's hard to make love's lines fly.