It's cheesy, it's stupidly cliché, but I can't help but enjoy it whenever I see it
Beautiful movie, love the intertwining storylines. Quite amazing how they fit so many stories and kept it interesting.
The scene with Emma Thompson breaks my heart everytime, and the soundtrack throughout the whole movie makes the experience 10 times more emotional.
I love love love the ending with Colin Firth.
Only little thing I noticed was so many fat jokes. It doesn't bother me per se but after 20 jokes it got a bit old.
Apart from that one little, obvious, tiny, little baby hiccup, I think this is a perfect movie, 4th year in a row I'm watching this one!
Perhaps the ultimate Christmas film and the pinnacle of British humour.
My all-time favorite Christmas movie! I love it so much!
Actually I expected so much better than this , the film has a very good and simple idea " love actually all around us " the beginning was so interesting
But it could have been so much better , I liked the film ,I've enjoyed most of its scenes
The movie included many beautiful emotions which didn't have to be expressed them by this way , the dirty talk , the sex and those porn pictures , I mean it wasn't necessary at all ..
I'd rather watch this precious emotions in a pure and warming way as it should , because this is LOVE .. It's not just about sex , it's so much simpler than this and more complicated in the same time
this is one of the movies which make me upset because I know it would have been a great one if they had worked better on it
I mean it's dumb obviously but I cried a bunch so ya
"Love Actually" is probably the best example for wearing nostalgia goggles when it comes to enjoying a piece of media if there ever was one.
You know, I enjoy movies and TV Shows that can be deemed a "product of its time" to a certain degree. Like, take "Friends" for an example. There’s so much humor in the show and so many views we, as a society and individual people, have grown out of and it certainly displays some forms of humor that shouldn’t have been accepted even in the 90s, but we learn and grow and change (some of us do). I can still enjoy it and love it for what it is, because it brings me back to simpler times and gives me a specific peace of mind I‘m often lacking these days. And that’s what nostalgia does. It brings us back to places, mostly to give comfort.
"Love Actually" is a film I‘ve been watching around Christmas probably since it first came out and I still do it every year. It was a tradition first, now it feel like more of an obligation.
While "Friends" has aspects that haven’t aged well, "Love Actually" as a whole is just the opposite of fine wine and one of the few examples where the nostalgia goggles wear off with each passing year.
I don’t hate it or anything, I still remember why I initially loved it, and I still enjoy certain aspects, but overall it just is one big red flag of everything that should not be considered romantic.
The movie is an extravaganza of body shaming, sexism, cheating, homophobia and many more aspects that just make me say "yikes.“
Just to cover a few examples:
- Nathalie is not only body-shamed for no fucking reason, but also sexually assaulted and punished for it.
- Mark is a stalker
- Everything about the Colin Frissell storyline and the portrayal of women
- Whatever the fuck is going on between Billy Mack and his manager
- Sarah never getting a resolve for always putting her brother first and staying miserable
- The whole cheating storyline and how it’s handled
There’s just so much. And the question is... why? None of this is actually romantic. A lot of these characters are quite miserable if we think about it.
And even the storylines I personally think are less in the issue zone are not free of it.
I always enjoyed Jamie and Aurelia, but even here we have the body shaming of the sister, the questionable aspect of British superiority complex to her Portuguese heritage and the issue that Jamie falls for his housekeeper without knowing her and "saving" her from her poor life.
Sam‘s puppy love is also quite adorable and at least it’s kids falling in love so the fucking airport chase is at least not as bad. (Though I also don’t get how grief is addressed in this storyline).
That leaves substitute porn actors John and Judy, who are ironically probably the least offensive storyline of the whole movie.
Like I said, I know why I initially enjoyed this film. I understand why people still do. I get why it’s considered a Christmas classic. It’s just, my nostalgia goggles are highly dysfunctional when it comes to his movie.
I don't know why I tortured myself sitting through all 135 minutes of that, but here we are.
The only thing that makes this movie somewhat tolerable is the cast. There's a lot of big names in this, but not all of them are featured as prominently in the movie as they are on the art in front of the bluray. Especially Rowan Atkinson isn't even a full minute in the movie, it's just another big name to add to the list of people that are in this.
It just makes it feel more like a feel-good Christmas movie cash-grab. The best is Emma Thompson, she's amazing in everything.
It could have been so much more. It starts and ends with people meeting with their loved ones in the airport, but it's not where the story starts off. It would have made a lot more sense to start off with that and build up characters through that. But it's just 10 or so stories that are slightly connected somehow (mostly done by things happening on screens). It just feels so bloated and convoluted because by the end of it, you barely know anyone from this movie, and that's a real shame with these kind of actors.
The only other positive thing I can say is that is was charming, but most of that is done by the excellent work of the actors handling a script that is laughable at best. The text just isn't written for the characters, it really feels like they've been put words in their mouth and had to fill in the rest by themselves. Luckily these people are pretty good at that. It particularly bothered me with Thomas Brodie-Sangster (Sam). The little kid talks about love like he's been through it all before and watching Titanic he knows exactly what it's like in real life. I'm just not buying it.
It would have been better if they cut half of the stories, connected them more deeply so it feels like more of a world of story. Make them come together for Christmas at the end. Not like only 8 of the 10 coming together for the nativity play. Get all of them in there, don't be afraid to get some drama in there (nothing is always lovey-dovey). Just... urgh, this feels too fantastical and whimsical.
Conclusion:
Not my cup of tea. I'm sure people love this for its charm, I just couldn't get into it.
Great movie. I like the music, reminds me of the early 2000's :)
Love, Actually, the British remake of Steven Soderbergh's 2000 romantic comedy Traffic, triples the number of interlinked stories but inexplicably drops the helpful color-coding.
There are five jokes in this romantic comedy: Hugh Grant's dancing (funny, but there are many funnier dorky dance sequences to be found in cinema), Rowan Atkinson's gift-wrapping (extremely funny), Bill Nighy's drunk rock star (grating), women's weight, and the existence of trans women (neither of the last two landed for me?). There are twice as many plotlines as there are jokes, which might explain why the fat jokes had to be reused so much.
2003 is a real weird time, culturally. 9/11 is deeply embedded in this movie: collective trauma has recently murdered irony but hasn't quite killed the 90s yet. There's an escape from post-9/11 airport security that doesn't really work anymore - I think in 2003 it was supposed to make us cheer like everybody tearing their mask off in BTS's "Permission to Dance" video was supposed to do in 2021. There's a deep nostalgia in this movie for the 90's obnoxiousness and innocent misogyny that stands in for a longing for normalcy and home. (This is also happening again today, and I think it helps explain the continued popularity of Ricky Gervais & Dave Chappelle, whose latest work consists of jokes recycled from 1990s amateur open mics.) Half the actors are gunning for Oscars (and Emma Thompson deserves one for the way she smooths those bedsheets) and half overact like they're in a Mel Brooks production. Most don't have time to do anything. Keira Knightley gets roughly a minute to look angelically pretty and Heike Makatsch gets the same amount of time to look devilishly pretty (despite the script for her character being garbage). A bunch of interchangeable British men get roughly a minute to be obnoxious and make bad life choices. Martin Freeman gets a minute to be adorably bangable. Lucia Moniz gets a minute and a half to fall in love for no apparent reason and has basically nothing to work with in the script but nevertheless steals the movie. Thomas Brodie-Sangster somehow gets too much screen time: we get the plot point, he's a cute kid.
The Laura Linney story gets a bad rap, but IMO it's the best-executed plotline - she's really the only female character that gets any depth from the script and direction. (Emma Thompson gets a bunch, but it's entirely from her performance.)
I don't know why the cue cards are the thing that became a meme? They're not charming in context? It's not like I lack a romantic bone in my body, I probably have every romantic bone it's possible to fit underneath my skin, and I didn't even aww at the cue cards. Are we all sure the cue cards actually came from this movie and aren't actually a John Hughes thing from a better movie?
Despite the ways this movie is bad, it should be much worse than it is: too many characters and plots, all stunt-interlinked, a wildly uneven script, each individual romance hackneyed and many of them un-root-for-able, no directorial comedic timing, a climactic monologue that's just a list of British things? But somehow it does come together to do something a little magical. I get why this movie is beloved even though it is definitely not good - it just has so much surface area to react to, even hating it is pretty entertaining. This is my maybe most highly recommended 4/10?
I had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA that the climactic Mariah Carey song was this old!!! I think of that Christmas album as a modern classic but it is apparently a golden oldie? (Edit: it was apparently ten years old at this point!?!? I must have encountered it late.) I declare that it has still not been topped.
This movie really has everything: love, happiness, despair, romance, disappointment, beauty, awkwardness, and just LIFE.
I mean, even the ending shows how some people get a beautiful happy ending, but some people simply don’t…
P.S. this movie genuinely did also crack me up quite a few times. It’s really such a fun watch:heart:
it had a lot of "goofy" unrealistic moments, but still it was fun
the scene where emma thompson beautifully wipes away her tears while joni mitchell plays invented cinema
I hadn’t seen the film a second time since it came out in 2003 so I was a little nervous to see it again. I generally loathe rom-coms and I had spent seventeen years telling anyone that would listen how much I liked this movie. On second viewing it was even better than I remembered. There are times when I writing a review of a movie where I just throw out the thoughts on the details of the movie and just say that I loved the hell out of what I watched (as I did recently with This Is Where I Leave You). The minute it was finished I could have watched it again and I never feel that way about a movie. Is it cheesy and sappy and obvious at times? You bet. It doesn’t matter – the movie is magical.
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“Christmas is all around.” Love Actually is a wonderful romantic comedy that’s a lot of fun. The film follows a series of intersecting love stories leading up to Christmas Day. A few of the character stories fall a bit flat, but the majority of them come together in touching, well-crafted dramatic moments. Keira Knightley, Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Alan Rickman, Elisha Cuthbert, and Bill Nighy lead an all-star ensemble cast and give strong performances. Incredibly entertaining, Love Actually is a sincere, heartwarming film with a positive message.
'Love Actually' isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.
The film really captures the spirit of Christmas and Bill Nighy was fun to watch. Nighy has the best story in the movie, in my opinion. Andrew Lincoln, on the other hand, is creepy as hell in this movie. Even Lincoln himself admitted it.
Putting aside the creepiness, it's still the most Christmas of all Christmas movies you'll find.
Having not seen this film in probably more than a decade, I forgot how entertaining it is. It’s funny right off the cuff with a vast and unusually interesting array of characters.
I would suggest that Colin Firth meeting someone who doesn’t speak his language and nevertheless falling in love in two weeks is a touch farfetched. However, what’s even more unruly is learning almost an entire foreign language in order to propose in just one week.
Rick Grimes didn’t sound right and whilst he may not have shown up with hope, he most certainly showed up with an agenda.
Hugh always pulls the younger birds and Bilbo got to touch Stacey’s tits.
All in all, a good watch that I forgot was that good.
It's Love Actually, what is there to say. A must see, definitely with Christmas! And of course very cliché, but still fun.
I have seen this once before, years ago, but I didn't remember anything about it and you know, it's Sunday before Christmas, this movie was on TV in the middle of the afternoon, so why not just watch it while dozing off and eating cookies?
I mean, I don't like cheesy, instalovey Rom-Coms, especially the ones set around Christmas anway, but oh boy, this really didn't age well :grimacing:
The one and a half stars I'm giving this movie are shared by Emma Thompson, who's just perfect, Laura Linney, who takes care of her mentally ill brother (although I don't understand why she can't have a romantic relationship and being an awesome sister at the same time) and Hugh Grant's dancing scene.
Such an amazing cast! And every time we watch it, we discover someone new that we see in other movies and tv shows!
This has some rather large amount of cheese and some flaws but I can't help but love it
This is the worst movie I have ever seen.
I liked it better on a rewatch. Such a stacked cast. Most of the stories are great. Andrew Lincoln's still is super creepy though.
beautiful, i adore the simplicity and that some stories are left unresolved. slow at first but i liked that it followed more than one couple yet they were all connected somehow!
Don’t get the hype
Richard Curtis was lucky he was able to assemble so much great acting talent (Emma Thompson and Laura Linney should get particular mention here) because they really help lift the overall perception of the film's calibre and obscure the dubious qualities of his storylines and the underwritten characters. Enjoyable if you watch it at a surface level but if you think about it for too long you may decide to switch to something else.
What the hell is this?
As a fan of virtually all of Richard Curtis' other films, especially About Time and Notting Hill.... I find it strange that I don't warm to this one as much.
It's an array of plot lines all woven together very well. A couple of them get me emotionally attached but several don't.
Despite an abundant cast all doing good jobs, Emma Thompson deserves extra credit for her role - and that scene. Excellent.
It's not a bad film, just a little lightweight in trying to carry so many threads. And parts are not aging well at all.
7.25/10
I hadn't seen the film a second time since it came out in 2003 so I was a little nervous to see it again. I generally loathe rom-coms and I had spent seventeen years telling anyone that would listen how much I liked this movie. On second viewing it was even better than I remembered. There are times when I writing a review of a movie where I just throw out the thoughts on the details of the movie and just say that I loved the hell out of what I watched (as I did recently with This Is Where I Leave You). The minute it was finished I could have watched it again and I never feel that way about a movie. Is it cheesy and sappy and obvious at times? You bet. It doesn't matter - the movie is magical.
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Something you may not be aware of: Universal has made an awful lot of Christmas films. We’ve already reviewed Holiday Inn, Last Christmas, and It Happened One Christmas in this column before. Universal’s connection to the Grinch franchise is well known as well, with their Grinchmas promotion at the Islands of Adventure park in Universal Orlando.
Yes, Universal knows Christmas.
How about Romantic Comedies? You have the Richard Curtis movies, naturally (more on that in a minute). The Doris Day flicks in the 60s were all Universal and Meryl Streep’s mature comedies like It’s Complicated and the Momma Mia films. So, they have a little street cred in that world as well.
Get it? Universal? World? I still got it.
Romantic comedies were riding high in the 80s and 90s. It seemed like Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan had a movie coming out every couple of weeks and they all did reasonably well given their reasonable budgets. Richard Curtis wrote and even directed a number of UK based rom-coms that did well for Universal during that period: Bridget Jones’s Diary, Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and today’s review: Love Actually. This is my hot take.
Richard Curtis kind of killed rom-coms with Love Actually.
Curtis was coming off a string of successful scripts and this was his first directing job. At the time, I remember stories that his goal was to make the ultimate rom-com and there is evidence throughout the film. It literally has storylines for days and represents a ton of different types of love. Represented, and this is just a sampling, include: brother/sister, interracial, language differences, geographical distance, unrequited, love of your best friend’s spouse, in the workplace, cheating on your spouse, obligational, chubby chasers, buddy…I’m sure I’m missing many.
In short, he succeeded to not only make a parody of rom-coms and the best of them in one film. Much as Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein killed the original Universal monster movies, by exposing the tropes of romantic comedies, this film made it a tough act to follow.
Rom-coms have returned lately and I think the popularity was exposed by the HCMU (Hallmark Christmas Movie Universe) films. Audiences knew they were missing something and those micro-budgeted cable films exposed the belly to many. Now, rom-coms are slowly re-emerging from the crypt they had been decomposing in for the past two decades.
So how did this movie crush the genre? By being better than the rest. Not only is it funny, it is star-studded, moving, emotional, intricately plotted and heart wrenchingly romantic.
Let’s bottom line some of these plotlines, shall we?
Let’s start with Billy Mack (played to perfection by Bill Nighy), the has-been rock star, and his pudgy manager Joe. This story plays up the Christmas aspect of the film as they begin a five week countdown to Christmas as Billy’s latest crass Christmas knock off album climbs the charts due to insanely lewd interviews Billy Mack provides to all the major news outlets. In the process, Billy Mack learns how important his friendship with Joe is to him.
Then we have Keira Knightley who is quite literally “Jessie’s Girl” if you remember the Rick Springfield hit that kicked off the 80’s. The heartbreak portrayed by Andrew Lincoln is some of the most moving of the film and perhaps one of the most romantic, and definitely the most heartbreaking, of the storylines.
Colin Firth is cheated on and finds love with a housekeeper that doesn’t even speak the same language as him. I always found this storyline a little surprising that we went from being cheated on to falling in love with someone you can’t understand and quickly LEARNING A NEW LANGUAGE in the space of five weeks. Still, timeline aside, it is a lovely tale.
Hans Gruber himself, Alan Rickman plays a boss that has an inappropriate relationship with his secretary when Emma Thompson, his wife, learns of the affair (how far it has gone remains a little ambiguous). Her reaction is different from Firth’s, but the situation is different as well. Where this film excels is in how it allows the themes and stories, while predictable thanks to being a part of the romantic comedy genre, they are also complicated tales.
Hugh Grant, as the Prime Minister, takes a shine to his household staff member while Billy Bob Thornton (as the United States President) visits. We come close to an international interest, but you know love conquers all. I always considered this the “A” story in the film and I’m pretty sure most of the screen time is dedicated to this story, but it is such a tightly wound film, it's hard to tell.
Liam Neeson, who plays Emma Thompson’s friend (I believe they were married to each other at the time in real life), is a widower helping his young son get over the loss of his mother. Neeson portrays grief as well as anyone I’ve seen on film and the story is truly touching and the source of the driving action toward the climax.
Laura Linney, who works for Alan Rickman in the film, is in love with a coworker (the name of this firm should be Sexual Harassment and Associates, methinks). However, she is so busy with her obligations caring for a mentally ill sibling, it gets in the way of love.
Kris Marshall (from Death in Paradise) is a goofy Englishman who believes he is unsuccessful with women because he is in the UK and not Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where all the women are beautiful. Pretty sure this section of the movie was based on a true story.
Martin Freeman and Joanna Page are body doubles for sex scenes that fall in love innocently while performing simulated sex acts on each other. Yes, really.
Sounds like a mess, right? Somehow it all works together. It ties together with dozens of connections between the various characters on many different planes of relationships.
If you like romantic comedies of the British flavor, run, don’t walk, to see this film. This is quite possibly my favorite comedy, but definitely my favorite romantic comedy. Enjoy it with the ones you love!
Not even Christmas, but who the hell cares?!
I've loved this movie ever since seeing it in theaters and have watched every few Christmases since. Watched it last night for the first time in a few and I gotta say....it's showing its age. Not crazy about it anymore. Too many bummer stories and some other stuff just doesn't work as well as it used to. Honestly the only segments that didn't make me cringe or roll my eyes was the Bill Nighy one. That one still works for me.
'Love Actually' isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.
The film really captures the spirit of Christmas and Bill Nighy was fun to watch. Nighy has the best story in the movie, in my opinion. Andrew Lincoln, on the other hand, is creepy as hell in this movie. Even Lincoln himself admitted it.
Putting aside the creepiness, it's still the most Christmas of all Christmas movies you'll find.
This is one of the most under rated movie I have ever seen. A must watch for everyone. Just plug in your Earphone and let the movie run its course. At the end, you will feel refreshed.
Reds and whites and Christmas. Bright lights and snow. Quintessentially British. But not the American-version of London. Actual London.
Well, Richard Curtis is a legend for the British rom-com and say what you will about them being problematic and cliché but they are SO FEEL-GOOD AND EMOTIONAL! And Love Actually probably is the epitome of this with the interwoven loves and woes of the wonders of this British acting collective. It's expected for a film such as this with its large cast to become either over-complicated or under-developed but personally, I think the balance created is spot on.
Also written by Curtis, there's just enough to experience a Christmas in the life of each of these characters. With the amount of time lent to each, we can't expect too much in terms of development or depth but for the overarching story and experience, it's powerful in its result.
This film is the definition of perfectly cast. Emma Thompson having to deal with Rickman's ass. WHAT A WOMAN. Not to mention, the noughties bangers killed me and brought me back to life.
I live tweeted this as I watched it with my Mum. All in all it took nearly three hours to watch with all the pauses and the rewinds but my God this is an experience in itself, isn't it? Could we get a film for each of characters? Would we want that? What would it look like as an anthology rather than intertwined? I'm not sure if I care to know? It certainly wouldn't be half as emotionally enthralling.
7.5/10 really warm and beatiful with great directing and acting perfomances
One hell of a cast and they don't disappoint.
It is rare for a film of great acting to be married to a terrific script. Yet it is something else for it to speak right to the audience; not talk at them, not try to sell them a film. Let them experience the film. Let it wash over them little by little until there is nothing more of them left.
Perfect movie to get in to the holiday spirit. Pretty basic storylines but lovely and romantic nonetheless. Especially loved the story between Jamie and Aurelia.
Total chick flick that I would not want to watch again, ever!
It is a romantic comedy, if you like the genre you will actually love this movie
Wow, I discovered a unique layers of romanticism, that warmth and plush feeling.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2018-12-25T23:02:44Z
[4.8/10] What if you managed to wrangle a host of England’s finest actors, and threw them into a movie devoted almost entirely to the meaning of Christmastime and love, with a horrible, arguably repugnant understanding of both? As Love Actually itself predicts through the story of its aging rocker cashing in on a turgid cash-in X-mas album, that turd would become a venerable number one hit.
Love Actually is an embarrassment, a bit of holiday hokum suitable only to lull you to sleep after large doses of eggnog and honey ham. That is, perhaps, a little too harsh a pronouncement. When the film tries to be something other than adult romance -- whether it’s parental encouragement, sibling comfort, or simply friendship -- it is cute at worst and heartwarming at best. But when it tries to spin tales of actual romantic love between grown-ups, it lays the film’s horrid ethics, thin romcom tropes, and sexist leanings bare.
So let’s alternate between the two and attempt to uncover the best and worst of this misguided but seemingly unkillable film in the process.
The most prominent offender is the Hugh Grant plot. (Fair warning, I’m going to refer to these vignettes by performer rather than by character name, since that’s about as much thought as the film put into the characters.) The story, which stars Grant as England’s Prime Minister and Martine McCutchen as the assistant he falls in love with, can basically be summed up as “What if we did the Monica Lewinsky scandal, except played it as romantic?” and is pretty much that wrong-headed throughout.
The film at least commendably tries to distance itself from that sort of thing, making Hugh Grant single and caking the whole thing in meetcute energy. But it’s emblematic of all the things that make this movie’s romantic leanings so repugnant. For one thing, it’s focused on a power imbalance between the romantic leads, that is only obviated when the Prime Minister fires (or “redistributes”) the girl he’s crushing on after he’s caught her making out with the American president, in a bit so ridiculous and contrived, all the film can do with it is make it the motivation for Hugh Grant to find his backbone as a leader, as dumb a dramatization of implicit sexual harassment as you’re likely to find.
But it’s fine, you see, because Hugh Grant loves his assistant despite the fact that she isn’t rail thin, and we’re supposed to admire him for this “I love my curvy wife” affection. It’s part and parcel with the raft of idiotic fat-shaming in the movie, from the multiple unnecessary comments about McCutchen’s size, to the Portuguese father in Colin Firth’s story bitching about his overweight daughter, to Bill Nighy’s continued references to his “fat manager.”
At least Bill Nighy’s behavior as washed up rockstar Billy Mack is framed as bad behavior, and maybe that’s why Nighy’s plot goes down smoother than some others. There’s a teenage boy perspective to this whole movie, and that finds more purchase under the mantle of an aging rockstar than it does to any sort of romantic feelings between adults. Watching Nighy misbehave in the guise of promoting his new turd of a Christmas cash-in to hit #1 on the charts is one of the more entertaining threads throughout the film. And Bill realizing that his best friend, and the person he loves most in the world, is the manager he’s been jostling with in the lead-up to the holidays, manages to wring the slightest modicum of heart out of the plot, even if, like most other bits in the film, the ending manages to squeeze in treating women like disposable objects.
Speaking of which, the absolute dumbest bit in the film is Colin, the libidinous pick-up artist who’s convinced that American girls would fall all over him, and travels to Wisconsin over the holidays to prove himself right. The whole story has the maturity and romantic POV of an American Pie movie, and the contrived, cartoonish way that women in the USA stumble over themselves to bring him into a foursome and are ready to jump into bed with anything speaking the Queen’s English is foolish at best and gross at worst.
And yet somehow, the most wholesome storyline in the episode is the one where the soon-to-be couple spends most of the film naked. The story of Martin Freeman and Joanna Page, who play sex scene stand-ins with no qualms about chatting in the buff on screen but feel shy and retreating in normal situations, manages to take a ribald premise and actually make it cute. It’s telling that the most normal-seeming, even-keel romance Love Actually can muster is built on the fact that two people who have every opportunity to be attracted to one another on a physical level instead connect on a personal level.
That’s a mirror image of Colin Firth’s storyline, where after finding his wife cheating on him with his brother, his character (a writer) retreats to a french vacation house to recover. There, he meets a hired housekeeper named played by Lúcia Moniz, who only speaks portuguese and whom he’s generally indifferent to. Then, all of a sudden, he sees her strip down to her underwear (with the film careful to pan across her body in slow motion) and magically he is in love. The film tries to paper over this, conveying that there’s a nigh-spiritual connection between them as they express the same feelings even though they can’t understand one another. And there’s an O. Henry-esque finish with the duo each learning the other’s language in order for a spur-of-the-moment proposal to work. But in the end, it’s another power imbalance with Firth deciding that his housekeeper, who doesn't speak his language, is hot, and the film shifting into rapidly implausible romcom mode to try to not only justify it, but make it sweet, to few returns.
The best the film can manage, and really what it coasts on the whole way through, is due to the talent of actors like Firth, who make these absurd and frankly repugnant situations have the faintest patina of humanity to them. That’s the saving grace of the story where Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson play a married couple, where Thompson discovers Rickman’s wandering eye. It’s one of the more down-to-earth, non-saccharine stories in the film, which bolsters it, and Thompson in particular wrings the comedy, pathos, and relief her character experience at various point. But even here, the plot is bogged down by the third member of the love triangle being another power-imbalance secretary whose only purpose or character in the film is to be Rickman’s seductress, replete with even more gratuitous lack of clothing. There’s an extended, not especially funny interlude from Rowan Atkinson that feels dissonant, and the climax of the plot, what should be its high point of a confrontation, bottoms out with an overblown, overly dramatic exchange between Rickman and Thompson rather than something that feels more grounded and real.
That’s something only managed by Laura Linney, whose character in enamored with a handsome co-worker, but whose romantic life is all but scuttled by her mentally ill brother, whose unfortunately-timed phone calls require her to pause her life to look after him. It’s another story here that succeeds by not being focused on romance, and instead on a filial love, that’s bolstered by the twinge of tragedy and realness to it that isn’t realized nearly as well in Thompson/Rickman infidelity plot. The film still goes big at times with the timing of the brother’s phone calls or his behavior in the hospital, but it’s founded on the hardship for Linney of sacrificing her love life for the good of a sick family member, but also the corresponding joy and warmth she’s able to wring from looking after someone she cares about.
That’s the opposite tone the film strikes when trying to depict impossible love in the Keira Knightley/Andrew Lincoln story, which is arguably the most iconic in the film. Enough has been written about this storyline already, but suffice it to say, nothing speaks to this film’s befuddling values more than the fact that it wants the audience to find nothing sweeter than a guy creeping on his best friend’s girlfriend/fiancee/wife from afar, and then confessing his feelings after they’re married and she’s found his secret tape of her. If you want to understand this movie’s confused view of love, you could watch this segment alone and comprehend, if not necessarily understand, how backwards Love Actually is when it comes to its titular subject matter. And as a bonus for fans of The Walking Dead (another work with some quality performances but not always admirable values and oft-atrocious writing), we discover that it’s not Andrew Lincoln’s cheek-chewing Georgia accent that’s holding him back, but rather his inability to seem like a real human being, whether he’s playing a trauma-swallowing southern sheriff or a creeptastic English romcom lead.
But again, Love Actually finds its footing when it instead focuses on the puppy love of middle schoolers, the sort of romance that is chaste and rudimentary enough to dovetail with the film’s naive-at-best view of human interactions. The notion of Liam Neeson’s character, newly widowed, connecting with his stepson by coaching him through a crush is one of the few genuinely sweet and heartwarming bits that the movie offers. It’s buoyed by the fact that the storyline centers more around Neeson’s growing relationship with his stepson, and leaves the tween romance material for school pageant pop songs and silly airport chases. Nothing in this plot is mindblowing, but there’s a bit of knowing fun and true feeling in it that’s all but missing from the rest of the movie.
Despite all its faults, Love Actually remains eminently watchable, which perhaps, more than its series of saccharine scenes, explains its longevity. Whether you want to attribute that to the killer cast director Richard Curtis assembled, or the light tone the film maintains, or the fact that jumping between plots keep the movie light on its feet, it’s an easy film to leave on, whether you’re genuinely touched by its stories or more apt to make fun of them. The linkages between plots are occasionally contrived, but generally clever, and even at its most eye-roll-inducing, the film is too insubstantial to really hate.
But the more you think about Love Actually, the clearer it becomes how ill-conceived the whole enterprise is. Between the cavalcade of men in positions of power lusting after their underlings, the body-shaming-in-the-guise-of-affirming and male gaze-y camera work, and the fundamental misunderstanding of what motivates genuine caring, affection, and yes, love are, it soon becomes apparent that this film is a pile of rusty nails covered by a thick layer of frosting and doused in ipecac. It seems sweet enough at first, but it’s more baffling and painful the deeper you go, and god help you if you start regurgitating it.