To ask who's story you don't like in Love Actually?

[fairybeagle]

I don't like Colin's. And as I've got older I've started to dislike Andre Lincoln's characters (which is sad as I used to love it so sort of taking the magic out of it) as he's actually a creepy stalker.

I wonder what Richard Curtis thinks of the film.

Or Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant etc...

To paraphrase a well-used saying: they probably think "Should have thought that out a bit more" all the way to the bank.

Colin Firth’s is a bit random - like they wanted him in it but didn’t know where.
And needed a bit of jumping-into-a-lake-action involving him

Completely pointless observation that puzzles me. When Martine McCutcheon's character is introduced, it's supposed to be her first day. Yet when she brings Hugh Grant chocolate biscuits she says something along the lines of the PM before only ever having the boring ones. Unless I've misunderstood and it's not her first day. But it bugs me.

Oh good question! I happened to watch this bit the other day! Wasn't it that she would've brought the other PM boring biscuits if he / she'd won? Or maybe first day means first day of new government...?

Given that Martine McCutcheon’s character appears to have been written by a committee of luvvies who have never met an actual working-class person, and compounded her instead out of the Artful Dodger, Dick Van Dyke’s Bert the Chimney Sweep and a soupçon of body-shaming, I can quite well believe they didn’t think through the biscuits.

horror, you have a point.

Oh maybe that's what she meant Henry. It's been a while since I watched it.

Feigning

I always thought Colin’s story was really stupid too OP

Another thing that bothers me is do you even get tea ladies anymore?

Another thing that bothers me is do you even get tea ladies anymore

I wonder if the PM pops down the canteen at Number 10?

But surely they would be called catering managers or something like that? It was straight out of a 1970s sitcom.

They don't change the staff at number 10 after a new PM or government is installed so it would be right that the tea girl would be there for him as she was for the last PM.
I just assumed they meant that was the first day with the new man.
I always imagined they would have catering staff to fetch tea/ coffee / biscuits etc as they can hardly walk around to the local coffee shop that easily plus any pics you see on line shows them with cups etc in front of them and I can't imagine they make their own drinks!
( I have no idea really , but it just seemed to be the sort of thing that goes on and not that odd )

www.geeksaresexy.net/2019/12/14/love-actually-but-with-a-cat-video/

This version is much better!

The Colin story is funny

It fits right in with the whole “lad culture” from 20 years ago.

The joke is that it is all extremely unlikely , the unattractive bloke, the sad bar, all those hot babes

It is unexpected (in real life he’d not have even met girls like that anywhere), and plays with your expectations (as you expect him to fail, right?)

I disliked every single one. Every relationship was flawed or cruel or uneven or inappropriate. I really disliked the while movie and was sad about it as I had hoped to enjoy it.

Sad that life imitated Art for Liam Neeson

I loathe Love, Actually. Classic Richard Curtis middle class London smugness - sexist, classist and not even entertaining.

The only half-way decent story is the Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman one, but even that is such a cliche - the older man fancying his hot young secretary while his wife weeps at home. Why couldn't Emma have been the one buying gifts for a hot young colleague, just for a change? And poor Laura Linney having to give up on the opportunity of a shag with that smoking hot guy out of duty to her brother? No way they'd have done that one with the genders reversed!

@draughtycatflap, that link you posted is gorgeous!

I love LA, despite all the 'wrongness' about it.
The clips of the airport arrivals at the end make me cry every single time.

I'd like to see a remake with the same stories, same script even (as far as possible) but with all the male characters changed to female and vice versa.

Not that I think it would be better - in fact it would be weird, unrealistic and uncomfortable - but that's sort of the point. It would show up all the sexist cliches and make people think a bit and wonder why it was ok the other way around.

For example: Middle aged single woman becomes Prime Minister and falls in love with the sweet, charming...erm..."tea boy". Looking up at a portrait of Boris Johnson. "Did you have this trouble...?"

Urgh.

For example: Middle aged single woman becomes Prime Minister and falls in love with the sweet, charming...erm..."tea boy". Looking up at a portrait of Boris Johnson. "Did you have this trouble...?"

Great idea!

Also: middle aged woman has emotional affair with much younger hot colleague while her same aged husband weeps silently at home.

Middle aged woman falls in love with much younger cleaner whose language she doesn't speak.

Man walks out on hot young woman who he's fancied for ages - just as they're about to get down to business - because he received a phone call from his mentally unstable sister.

And so on ad nausem.....

I think the airport arrivals are the best bit, too, horsemad; I reckon that's because they're 100% real and not the product of RC's slimy imagination!

Exactly IcedPurple. It's an interesting thought experiment if nothing else.

What a great idea @HearMeSnore! I'd love to see that.

@NearlyGranny, yes, it's the simplicity of those genuine arrivals scenes that do it. Very poignant.

Middle aged woman has emotional affair with much younger hot colleague while her same aged husband weeps silently at home.

I was under the impression it became physical. In the scene where she puts on the necklace, she's in her undies and she gets up from her messy bed as she puts the necklace on. I thought this meant he'd just been round to give her the necklace (and the rest). Bastard.

I don't know why I'm overanalysing Love Actually

I find it distasteful and unbelievable that Liam Neeson is supposedly heartbroken by his wife's death, yet only seven weeks later is in a new relationship with the Claudia Schiffer character (she's with him at the airport in the end credits). From heartbroken to newly loved up in less than two months. Nice.

While waiting for IKEA Knightly to arrive at the church, the groom and best man joke about the prostitutes they hired on the stag do, who turned out to be transvestites. Yeah that's really funny, hiring prostitutes on your stag do. Nice.

I like the theory Rowan Atkinson's character is actually a Christmas angel/spirit. He tries very hard to delay Alan Rickman buying the necklace for his secretary in the hope that Emma Thompson will return, see the necklace, and therefore Rickman has to give it to her not his fancy piece. Also Rowan Atkinson deliberately distracts the staff at the check in desk in order to allow the boy to bypass airport security.

The whole point of the Colin Frizzle story is how unexpected the story turns out to be. We watch it for the first time thinking he will go to America and be absolutely destroyed and return in dire humiliation. The twist is that it turns out exactly as he hoped!