AIBU that Love Actually makes me want to poke my eyes out? Light hearted.

[Mapletreelane]

Don't get me wrong, I love a good Christmas flick. But I'm seeing a lot of love on social media for Love Actually. Am I the only one who finds it cringey; it stereotypes Britain as posh and middle class, and Hugh Grant's dancing PM is just....horrendously embarrassing, not funny? It has a wealth of our greatest acting talent who manage to sound unnatural and unfunny. Give me Elf any day (And I am not a Will Ferrell fan). I'm seeing so much love for it and I just cannot see the attraction!

YABU- Get a life. Love Actually is one of the greatest Xmas films ever

YANBU - it is a cringefest akin to nails scraping on a blackboard (for those of you old enough to know what a blackboard is)

Don't like it, don't watch it

I'm amazed so many people hate the Keira Knightley storyline. Of all of them that's the one that made me cry when I saw it the first time, all those years ago. Unrequited love (that sort, not the sort where you've been together and then split up) gets to me, I suppose. He's not creepy! What he does is really noble. He's actively trying to avoid her for his friend's sake, to such an extent she thinks he can't stand her.

I absolutely love the Colin Firth and Aurelia storyline and his mangled Portuguese (not that I know any Portuguese at all) although I do find the suspension of disbelief difficult

• an author (a words-orientated person if ever there was one) falling in love with someone he can't communicate with in words at all. I suppose the irony of that is why it's romantic; just something I've never been able to get my head around when it happens IRL. (Falling in love across a massive language barrier, not authors doing so in particular!)

Terrible film but I still watch it every year. The part I find hardest to digest is the way Mia flirts with Alan Rickman with all the subtlety of a cartoon porn star. She could at least have had some substance in order to lure him away from the wonderful Emma Thompson.

I don't think I've ever watched it all the way through in one sitting. It's not the storylines that get me but the horrible type casting.

MM is meant to be "common" (ironically today she would be comparitavly innocent and well mannered/ worldly to what we now deem in the media as "down to earth").

And then there's Emma Thompson. The one revered (as PP put it so well) for no reason other than being an intentionally plain, relatively wealthy mum/professional/wife who ensures she fits into the mould which gives her the best social standing and respect, and stifles her emotions because clearly, to be so earnest and upset would be the pinnacle of weakness and ill breeding. Just not my cup of tea.... I was once a PA and worked for a lady who literally modelled herself on ET, lived in Notting Hill (apparently - insinuated a perfect Victorian villa but who knows or cares?), had the short haircut, refined tastes and airs of a worldly, coveted and self assured and wise woman who "had it all" (all of this is true btw). Of course this was along with her husband and kids. Yet when you actually got to know her through her own reactions to people, you realised she was just trying to be an image that would always be socially superior.

That's probably why I loathe the Emma Thompson character 😂 You don't have to be that image to be living happily, respectfully (and rich) in a London village.

It is one of the all time worst films ever.
If you love it and admit to doing so, I will judge you silently and find you wanting as a sentient human being.
That is all.

@Theterrorrun

I'm amazed so many people hate the Keira Knightley storyline. Of all of them that's the one that made me cry when I saw it the first time, all those years ago. Unrequited love (that sort, not the sort where you've been together and then split up) gets to me, I suppose. He's not creepy! What he does is really noble. He's actively trying to avoid her for his friend's sake, to such an extent she thinks he can't stand her.

I absolutely love the Colin Firth and Aurelia storyline and his mangled Portuguese (not that I know any Portuguese at all) although I do find the suspension of disbelief difficult

• an author (a words-orientated person if ever there was one) falling in love with someone he can't communicate with in words at all. I suppose the irony of that is why it's romantic; just something I've never been able to get my head around when it happens IRL. (Falling in love across a massive language barrier, not authors doing so in particular!)

He’s a creep. He’s avoided her previously, sure, but she finds out from the wedding video, so she is actually aware of his obsession, and yet he can’t resist making giant, illustrated cue-cards, choosing music, actually going over to her house where she’s newly married to his best friend on Christmas Eve, and staging this remarkably manipulative pantomime.

And because Richard Curtis thinks women are flattered by this crap, she kisses the creep rather than telling him to sod off with his supermodel/wizened mummy pictures and ‘Tell him it’s carol singers’.

Yes, this is fictional, but it’s still pretty dire that a writer and director could think ‘Oh, women will love this stuff.’

I'm smack in the middle- I watch it yearly but it bugs me that all the glamorous people end up happy and the people I'm rooting for get messed about!!

Ive never seen it 😂 maybe i should watch it, just so i can see hugh grant do a silly dance 😂

@draughtycatflap

It was a very popular film at the time. I remember singing along to “Where the fucks my fucking coat, Rudolph?” It was quite the Christmas hit that year.

😂

@ReginaTheEvilQueen

Ive never seen it 😂 maybe i should watch it, just so i can see hugh grant do a silly dance 😂

If you’ve never seen it, you can’t watch it now for the first time. You will hate it, no question!

Maigue - well, I can only say, I'm a woman (straight FWIW) and I loved and love it. (Where's a shrug emoji when you need one!) Also FWIW it was his character I identified with rather than hers.

I watch it every year, for no sane reason and get mightily pissed off on behalf of Emma Thompson's character. Time to not watch it again 😊

@MerchantOfVenom
Sorry but i just finished watching it and I actually really liked it 😂 tho i did think the scenes with the fake sex a bit cringy ☺️

Adding my comments about the Holiday. Massive overacting by Diaz and Winslett. Jack Black doesn't work as a romantic interest and don't get me started on "meet-cute"...

It's a middle class Lahndahn smug fest from start to finish.

Only saving grace is the Emma Thompson/Alan Rickman storyline, though even then, a middle aged man contemplating cheating on his similarly aged wife with a pretty young colleague is such a cliche.

And don't get me started on Keira 'I'm quite pretty, aren't I?" Knightley.

I always disliked it, even before considering the more problematic stories. The main problem is that, by the time it was made, Four Weddings and Notting Hill meant Richard Curtis’s stock was so high, people were queuing up to be in it - and he couldn’t bring himself to say no to any of these big names. As such, there are too many stories, and the most interesting ones lose time to fit in the ho-hum ones. I also think it’s weird that a film that’s supposed to be about love coming in a million different ways consists entirely of heterosexual stories. Apparently Anne Reid filmed scenes for it where she played an older lesbian woman, which could have been pretty groundbreaking in an era when the only lesbians we saw on screen were beautiful young woman who were there to bring in a male audience. But it ended up on the cutting room floor - probably to make room for bigger names.

But yes, Colin Firth basically buys a chambermaid who he ‘loves’ despite her not speaking a word of English, and all her family are thrilled. And Andrew Lincoln IS creepy. Would anyone really be charmed to discover that their husband’s best friend had pretended to hate her, but actually had made a weird wank-bank compilation of her from her wedding video?!

Keira Knightly saying 'I look quite pretty' grinds my gears.

Oh God yes - as if she’s somehow never even seen a mirror and realised she’s a stunner who makes the rest of us look like the old washerwoman from Toad of Toad Hall.

I love it, because it’s so daft and cringe!

But yes, Colin Firth basically buys a chambermaid who he ‘loves’ despite her not speaking a word of English, and all her family are thrilled. And Andrew Lincoln IS creepy. Would anyone really be charmed to discover that their husband’s best friend had pretended to hate her, but actually had made a weird wank-bank compilation of her from her wedding video?!

I'd say pretty much all the story lines are quite sexist.

The ones you mention and also:

• Emma Thompson silently sobbing as she suspects her husband of having an affair with a much younger woman
• Laua Linney giving up on the chance of a night with Rodrigo Santoro in favour of her 'duty' to her brother
• Liam Neeson getting with the nearly 2 decades younger Claudia Schiffer

Probably others too if I could be arsed to think of them!

It's not a typical romantic comedy! A rom com should have a happy ever after, Laura Derns and Emma Thompson being messed over ... sigh! Oh and poor kiera Knightley's husband, totally in the dark about everything!!

Laura Linney even, silly auto thingy ma bobby!!!!

@Maigue

Not really manipulative though- it brings closure , she goes back to the husband and he leaves her be

@IcedPurple

But yes, Colin Firth basically buys a chambermaid who he ‘loves’ despite her not speaking a word of English, and all her family are thrilled. And Andrew Lincoln IS creepy. Would anyone really be charmed to discover that their husband’s best friend had pretended to hate her, but actually had made a weird wank-bank compilation of her from her wedding video?!

I'd say pretty much all the story lines are quite sexist.

The ones you mention and also:

• Emma Thompson silently sobbing as she suspects her husband of having an affair with a much younger woman
• Laua Linney giving up on the chance of a night with Rodrigo Santoro in favour of her 'duty' to her brother
• Liam Neeson getting with the nearly 2 decades younger Claudia Schiffer

Probably others too if I could be arsed to think of them!

Which of those storylines are sexist?

When I saw it I was astonished at how bad it was.