To not understand how it’s only TODAY that I’ve ever watched Love Actually

[Careergoals]

And it was bloody lovely!

I genuinely don’t know how I’ve never seen this despite being 51. In my defence I’m not much of a film lover by DD had heard about it and decided to put it on.

So many big names in it, it was fab.

My heart actually broke for Emma Thompsons character though, what a shit of a man. Wonder if he did sleep with that woman.

Gosh, I remember seeing it in the cinema and while I was watching it my best friend was watching The Office Christmas special, and she texted me the big spoiler from that (I think the text was TIM KISSED DAWN!).

Can't believe that was 20+ years ago, but neither love actually nor the office have stood up particularly well. Emma Thompson is still magnificent, though.

Me too. I hated it first time I saw it at the cinema. So many of the storylines are really dreadful and not funny

Creepy sexualisation of children, creepy romanticizing of a stalker, and Martine McCutcheon (who looks to be size 12) is fat, apparently. (Also some nasty abuse of a woman who actually is fat, who has done nothing wrong bar Existing While Fat).

The Emma Thompson / Alan Rickman storyline is good. Laura Linney's bit also real, and sad, and brilliantly played. But it's patchy at best.

Creepy sexualisation of children

I take it that’s parody. I seem to recall a very innocent kiss on the cheek.

THANK YOU! Even Richard Curtis’s daughter has said how monumentally shit it is

To be fair Scarlett Curtis has some fairly extreme views so I wouldn’t give her opinion too much credence.

If yall wanna get upset about a Christmas movie, I watched Holiday in Handcuffs yesterday. Now that was problematic.

Has not ages well at all but it does show we have moved on from the noughties...

Emma Thonpson does her best but the middle class mum who apparently (?) forgives Alan Rickman for an affair (?) For the sake of the children is really a poor take on reality. Getting over infidelity becaiuse of what Christmas and 'love actaully'?

the backpacking guy who is inept at talking to English girls but ends up sleeping with four stunning US girls simply because of his accent seems like a scenario from a bad porn film.

Andrew Lincoln stalking Keira Knightley is just weird. She is a married women who is overcome by a guy professing love on her doorstep and apparently ends the approach with a kiss(?). Strange with no backstory.

Martin Freeman and the womb out of Gavin and Stacey doing the one joke throughout the film and it now just seems gratuitous nudity. It seems jarring someone grabbing naked breasts in a film when there really is not a great joke behind it and seems to be done just for shock value really.

Liam Neeson getting over his dead wife by dating Claudia Schiffer?

Hugh Grant pursuing a secretary and a very cliched portrayal of class divide which is somehow meant to be endearing?

Bill Nighy's weird bromance?

Strange portrayal of mental illness.....

It really is dated.

This is put very well but tbh I felt a lot of this when I saw it upon its release...

I loved it until I read the Jezebel review.

I love it but agree it hasn't aged well!

It’s so awful. I watched it the second time as I thought I missed something first time.

Emma Thompson is amazing, but the rest is terrible.

Im no film snob though, bloody love The Holiday. It’s my Boxing Day night movie, with a glass or two of wine. You could drive 10 buses through the plot holes, but Jude Law is dreamy, who wouldn’t fall in love with him.

And me. I get very weary of the claims that it’s only now that some people can see how offensive it is: all of the above applied when it was released and plenty of people thought it was a pile of shite then.

Yes, I mean I was 20 years ago, not 200. People were regularly making films and writing books in which women weren’t cardboard cutouts.

I love it. I agree it hasn't aged well. But the fat jokes for example were par for the course in 2003. If you weren't a size zero you were fat back then.

There are plenty of other films that have also aged badly but people still enjoy them.

They were par for the course unfortunately but they were also offensive at the time. See also Fat Monica in Friends. It’s a good thing that they are less acceptable now but they were clangers at the time too.

Feminism actually felt stronger back then than it does now. The bullshit of Love Actually was no better then than now.

Not a fan at all - I sat down to watch Last Christmas this eve for the third year running which I much prefer and am making it my mission to not cry at some point when I watch it !

Just watching this now. Yearly tradition.

God it's brilliant, and makes me miss 2000s London.

The scene where the prime minister knocks on Natalie's door has two of the funniest lines:

"Where the fuck is my fucking coat?"
"Eight is a lot of legs, David"

That is the best scene! Also Hugh Grant’s face when his driver starts singing the carol 😅

I realise I may be alone in this viewpoint (and have watched too many horror films) but when Colin went back to the American girls dorm, I genuinely thought they were going to murder him.

Appreciate that this scenario wouldn't be very Christmassy 😁

It would have at least made one of the storyline half interesting....

😁

Too sad for me!!!

I still love it, I think people take things too seriously. No films or sitcoms are meant to be a model for perfect behaviour. The guy with the signs only confessed his love because Keira thought he hated her!

There are so many things wrong with this movie.

The chap obsessed with his mates wife. And the fact she kisses him while her husband is upstairs and she lies its Carol singers

The two people pretending to have sex om every scene is just so cringe. And frankly gross.

The other young lad obsessed with going to America to have sex with other women.

Creep and the slut in the office and buying her the jewellery rather than his wife.

Calling the lady with dark hair fat, chubby and huge thighs when frankly she's gorgeous and curvy and not a bit fat is VILE.

The fact is a 12 is a rubbish rating too. Definitely should have been an 18.