"love actually"

Each in their unique way allows the audience to look at love in different variations - silent love, body-language love, parental love; foolish love; puppy love, a love fling; friendship, companionship, forgiving love, infatuation, et. al. It's, in reality, just the sort of movie the world needs right now.

Aw. Kill them.

cookies

I'm hoping X3 will be a musical.

A story of one British actor's love for white turtlenecks.

If only X2 had been a romantic comedy.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's greatest triumph!

"I'm Professor Xavier, I am
I gather mutants from Siam
Or Canada or Mexicoooooooo..."

you mean scotch, right?

And maybe it's because I'm an American, but Hugh Grant as Tony Blair is absolutely perfect in every way.

http://www.theonion.com/onion3530/blair_witch_3530.html

I guess this is a movie I'll have to see with someone. Something really creepy about checking out the afternoon show of a romantic comedy by yourself.

I will almost certainly despise the soundtrack. (Atomic Kitten doing a limp cover of something or other. Or maybe Girls Aloud).

But yes, I am really excited about Love Actually. And I believe that, deep down, Nick is excited about it too. He just doesn't realize it. Screw you guys!

where I grew up the nearest cinema was miles and miles away, until they built one a bit nearer us in a retail park, but to get to either you needed to either ride a bus and then walk for at least a mile, or you had to have a car and someone in the house who could drive it. We rented videos from the corner shop but they only had a dozen that weren't wholly innappropriate for children, which is why I've seen Problem Child 2 more than anyone ever needed to. I never really felt like I missed out - I enjoyed TV shows more than movies when I was young, and really I was more into playing video games with the sound turned off so I could listen to actual music. The cinema is expensive, you can't talk over it like you can at home, and I'd always rather have money for gigs and clubs.

As an adult with enough bleak stuff orbiting my life, I don't want to watch prestige dramas that upset me. I'm sure It's A Sin is great television and everyone who told me to watch it is right to think it would be relevant to my interests but there is nothing "fun" about 60 minute chunks of misery, and "fun" is what I'm looking for when I'm at a loose end. I really enjoyed the first few episodes of Pose and then suddenly everyone was talking about HIV, and while it was moving and powerful I just didn't want to try to unwind with it. Whereas you know you're getting campy, mindless nonsense when you sit down to Lifetime movies like Psycho Yoga Instructor, and you can get stuff done in the advert breaks too.

CaAL, thank you for sharing your story about her. It's very sad but I also think she sounds wonderful, based on the impact she clearly had on you and your life.

Can't watch Problem Child 2 enough, the peak of the trilogy

I like Laura Linney's little dance.

https://ew.com/thmb/DomTODqiByrNkYc71dCESPNMuZs=/1500x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/love-actually-laura-linney-b917607c25dd460bae5e3bd4de55a4c9.jpg

It doesn't rate anywhere near the top of this movie's sins but you'll be unsurprised to hear the portrayal of the Portuguese community in this is not great.

(English loser goes to America because he thinks American girls just love guys with English accents, he flies there, goes to a bar, flies back with four very attractive women in tow, THAT'S LITERALLY HIS ENTIRE STORYLINE!)

Yes, the thing about this storyline is beyond its offensiveness it's also NOT A STORY. Dude decides to do thing, does thing, it works.

from the famous Jezebel article which has almost certainly been posted ITT

This old French woman shows up at Chateau de Firth and is like, “Here, I found you a lady. I’m literally giving you this lady.” Score! Free lady! The lady is named Aurelia and she only speaks Portuguese, and so does her entire family, apparently, even though all of them live in France. It’s irritating.

Colin Firth falls in “love” with Aurelia at first sight, establishing Love Actually’s central moral lesson: The less a woman talks, the more lovable she is.

Colin Firth goes all the way home to London but as soon as he gets there he realizes he forgot his Portuguese sex slave on the baggage carousel or something. So he abandons Christmas dinner with his loving family and flies back to France. The one expression of genuine love in this movie and Colin Firth peaces-out to go hump a stranger.

He shows up at Aurelia’s front door and starts yelling at her father in shitty Portuguese. He’s like, “I am here to ask your daughter for her hand in marriage,” and the dad is like, “Say what!?” because he thinks Colin Firth means his other daughter, who is fat and gross, and that would obviously make no sense, because women who are slightly larger than some other women deserve to be alone forever unless they’re the size-6 kind of fake fat like Natalie. Then the dad offers to pay Colin Firth to take fat daughter off his hands. Colin Firth is like “Ew, no. I only want to purchase/marry HOT women I’ve never spoken to in my life.”

Once the truth gets sorted out, fat daughter says: “Father is about to sell Aurelia as a slave to this Englishman.”

FIRST SENSIBLE LINE ANYONE’S SAID FOR THIS ENTIRE MOVIE.

One good thing about this is it means everyone else has to suffer what people in the UK have since the 1980s: Richard Curtis' humour.

We think of Blackadder fondly and then you go back and look at it and half of it is like: this character loves sexually assaulting women and that's funny. This character is fat and ugly and that's funny. This character is stupid and that's funny. Probably all the good stuff was written by Ben Elton.

Repeat above for the Vicar of Dibley of course shudders

eltons stuff isnt funny

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/dec/09/keira-knightley-love-actually-quite-creepy-stalkerish-cue-cards

Never seen it, but thought that's why thread was revived

i've always assumed this was terrible because of the people I know who like it having the worst taste imaginable but thsi thread has made me never want to find out for myself

the cue card guy from the trailers is why I decided not to see it

Yeah that Knightley subplot is the worst. If you fancy the woman that is in a happy relationship with your best friend what you do about that is you keep quiet and wait for it to pass, you don't fucking make it her problem. You'd think a British director would know this, God help us if there's a war.

I'm really interested in what non-Brits made of Martine McCutcheon who played Natalie. She was a major character in Eastenders in the late 90s, at a time when the show was regularly getting 10-15 million viewers. Her character Martine was the cliche tragic heroine, a sweetheart who was battered by her husband and killed off in a Xmas car crash. In real life, the actress had quit to pursue a pop career which was initially successful, with a debut chart-topping single and a string of hits in its wake. But it still seemed odd that she got a major role in a film opposite Hugh Grant. She's got a reputation as being difficult to work with and her career has waned considerably.

― boxedjoy, Saturday, 7 December 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Had to look her up as yeah, watched her a lot when I watched EastEnders in the 90s.

Sad to report she divorced her lol singer songwriter husband this year.

i wonder how much this movie has influenced 'rom-com' writing. I saw my brother in this unfortunately abysmal romantic comedy musical. it was billed as the journey of two LGBTQ+ women as they navigate relationships, trying to sell it as a progressive play, but it was basically a heteronormative comedy that even Republicans would watch in the 90s. the only reference to the lead character's bi-sexuality was them showing her breaking up with a girlfriend in a 2 minute scene, who she breaks up with after having dreams about a guy she loved but never dated 7 years ago.

she uses this as a pre-text to travel to Europe to try and find him, after not having spoken to him for 7 years, despite not knowing where he lives (not even the COUNTRY), does wind up meeting him by accident and finds out he's married, stays with him and his wife for a night, they flirt, then she leaves, claiming discomfort with everything, then leaves him a note when she leaves basically inviting him to come find her. then when he shows up to be with her romantically, she gets upset that he hasn't begun the process to divorce his wife yet, talking about her as if she was just some unfortunate object. and this was supposed to be romantic! so part of me wonders if this cue card guy was an inspiration for that musical (though from reading spoilers i know they don't wind up together, thankfully).

I've ranted abt this elsewhere but will repeat -- Hugh Grant's 9/11 line in the opening moments of the film (the line that gives the film its title!) is one of the most WTF moments in cinema history. Had to rewind it bc I truly could not believe what I'd just heard.

surprised there's not been more 9/11 related romantic comedies

"Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow airport."

What an opening line.

lol, Richard Curtis blaming democracy for the card scene:

“I was in an office and there were about four people working in the office and I said what I’m going to do today is think of four ideas and then put them to the vote.”

“I went out and said to the four people working in the office if you were being flirted with, which of these would you prefer? They definitely picked the cards. so it was a community decision.”

Never forget:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYaP2pd01_0

This thread is almost making me want to watch this film to see if it's as terrible as it sounds. Almost.

xp a truly abysmal scene for a number of reasons, and yet it would at least have tied the film together a little.

xp ha me too - I've never seen it, but it sounds so bad I am now developing morbid curiosity about it

imo, real missed opportunity to not go ahead and lop off the other 134 minutes when they edited down that scene

would be better if the movie was just that a married couple is in an argument and the lady, frustrated, throws a pie in her husband's face, there's a pause...and then he grins and says "that's love, actually!"....cue credits

lol, Richard Curtis blaming democracy for the card scene:

I like that this quote makes it seem like the cards are the problem with that scene!

xp ha me too - I've never seen it, but it sounds so bad I am now developing morbid curiosity about it

As is probably detailed upthread, the only reason I watched it in the first place was because my other half rang me to tell me he'd watched an absolute shitheap of a movie and I needed to see it to believe it.

I think he'd also been treated to some 'deleted scenes' where embarrassing internet porn popups kept appearing on someone's computer in an embarrassing way, heeheehee.

I appreciate my past self for knowing this would be terrible out of the gate when this thread started. (And that Slocki wisely recanted.)

I have a relative who played that Beatles song at her wedding because of the movie. Personally I find the movie more boring than offensive. I can't even remember what the wedding scene was about.

https://letterboxd.com/keirmilbu/film/that-christmas/

If you want a glimpse of a future in which corporations get AI (or really Large Language Models) to pump out derivative, soul destroying, filler then watch this film. Please note: it wasn't actually written by AI but by Richard Curtis, the closest the 90s got to a machine that pumps out vacuous, creativity free, sentimentality-by-numbers dross.

At a party my brother and his wife are throwing and he just put this on.

Thankfully I'm about to leave

it's Christmas, stay with your family and ruin the movie for everyone

Lol almost everyone left when it started

An unreasonable amount of people in the UK, including people I know who think of themselves as having great taste, genuinely like this film

An even more unreasonable amount of ppl outside the uk too!

My suspicion is that everyone thinks this is a piece of shit now, and it only gets brought up in December because it’s easy pickings for journalists doing Christmas interview junkets.

Also, on the problematic noughties Christmas romcom front, The Holiday is much better, even if Jack Black is just as creepy in it as Andrew Lincoln. He spends the whole movie in “Robin Williams underplays a serial killer” mode

Man doesn't know shit about soundtracks either.

I avoided this movie for a long time because I didn't care much about rom-coms (or Christmas movies for that matter) and thought it was probably cheesy. Finally watched it last year to see what all the fuss was about, and ... yeah, it's pretty wretched. And not because of its genre (which I've since come to appreciate), it's just a bad movie.

I actually just watched The Holiday the other day, and it's not a great movie either, but it's much better than Love Actually.

Let's just take a moment to appreciate how shit the title "Love Actually" is. It's the verbal summation of Hugh Grant's romcom persona. Vapid, upperclass English, emotionally constipated, laconicism masquerading as wit...

Although I do like the fact people from Brighton call people from Hove "Hove Actuallys"

apparently the title was originally "Love Is Actually All Around" - a reference to Wet Wet Wet's hit from the soundtrack to Four Weddings and a Funeral

Is there a movie that does what Love Actually is supposed to do, i.e. be a low-stakes, non-ironic, fun romcom that's set at Christmas - that's not toe-curling?

Comfort and Joy is fun (the 1984 one)

I love that movie, only debatably a romcom tho.

I actually just watched The Holiday the other day, and it's not a great movie either, but it's much better than Love Actually.

― jaymc, Wednesday, December 18, 2024 9:05 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

the holiday is a fucking masterpiece compared to love actually. i mean i kind of think it's nancy meyers' magnum opus anyway

idk i like the one with keanu and diane the flooring is exceptional

that one’s good too!! the flooring, yes

we watched a Vera episode set at Christmastime last night, that was good

only Christmas media I need is the Beavis and Butthead Christmas episode.

oh and Claymation Christmas