Love Actually - Hasn’t dated so well…

[SMAJJ]

Following on from an earlier thread regarding Four Weddings, I watched Love Actually a few years back and can remember a few things that made me think it’s not dated so well!
Fat shaming, misogyny, homophobic but the worse one for me personally was Colin Firth’s character using an offensive ableist slur…
AIBU and overthinking it - it’s what it is yadda yadda even though it makes me cringe and is slightly triggering ( child has a disability)

its on over Christmas and it’s annoying me that it’ll be lumped in as a great Christmas film but I find it really outdated and offensive!

I really hate that kind of stuff: it’s nasty and outdated!!
Someone give my head a wobble but be kind if you do….

Off topic but I always thought it outrageous that Keira Knightley’s character, a married woman, gives her husband’s best mate a ‘pity’ kiss. Wtf

Honestly @frecklejuicewhen you put it like that it’s so stupid I know! I said it’s the ableist slur used in it that’s triggering… but as another poster said it’s because I now have a disabled child, so you pick up on it more, back then I probably didn’t ‘care ‘. that’s all honestly!

Notmyreality
Projecting much.
He didn’t stick around because there was nothing to stick around for.
He wasn’t willing to stay with her because she had her brother, a good guy would have talked to her/ said don’t worry about it, meaning it!

Not projecting- most of the people who had found love at the end were the model people!!

I love that film.

Why do some people constantly wait to be offended??
Looking at every little detail. It must be exhausting.
Watch it/ don’t watch it…..just don’t try to get it banned and take away the choice for others.
This kind of thing is getting so tedious.

I agree with this. It was beyond absurd that in the film, released two years after 9/11, the child was able to run past airport security and get away with it.

The film perhaps exists in its own timeless zone and the absurdity is all part of it.

Who has asked for it to be banned?

Why are you so agitated about people having a different opinion to you about a film?

Do you not see the irony of complaining about people who "constantly wait to be offended" whilst being so offended by this discussion?

No one has said ban the film. No one has made negative comments about people who like the film, unlike the snippy comments about those critical of it.

This. I've hated it since day one and don't see much/any actual love in it at all. But I learned to keep my opinion to myself as I was in a tiny minority.

It's not a perfect film and it's undoubtedly got bits that you can point to and dissect as problematic, absurd and/or excessively mawkish. But then you could say the same about a lot of other films.

It's one of those films for which I deliberately park my judginess and instead just enjoy it for what it is. Every year I watch it with DD and we point out the absurdities and the heavy-handed "this is a point where you should feel sorry for the characters" and everything else and we still have a damn good time. Just like I sit down with DS and watch Pacific Rim and laugh at its ridiculous script and massive plot holes and still have a damn good time watching giant mechs punch giant monsters. You can just enjoy things for what they are.

Oh for gods sake. Give it a rest.

@DBSFstupidwho rattled your cage?
It’s been interesting and not one person has been arsey… literally everyone has been ‘watch it don’t watch it…’ then you come along like an angry bull!🐂

It’s ‘of its era’ we can’t hold history, even recent history to today’s standards. Watch Friends, it’s similar. Fat shaming, sexist, homophobic etc.

THIS!

I love it and have watched it every Christmas since it came out.

I've been thinking about the "fat shaming" so please someone remind me what the issue actually is.

As I recall, Martine McCutcheon's character disclosed that her ex had fat-shamed her and she'd felt bad about it. Hugh Grant then (light-heartedly) offered to get the SAS to kill her shitty ex as retribution. Correct me if I'm wrong but that sounds like the message of the film is that fat-shaming is wrong.

Later, Billy Bob Thornton made an off-hand remark about McCutcheon's weight which was one of the main things that spurred Grant to grow a spine about UK:US relations and as a result told Thornton (semi-diplomatically) to fuck right off.

Finally, in the denouement, Grant made a light-hearted comment about McCutcheon's thighs as she was very publicly wrapping her legs around him and they were just about to kiss. That struck me very much as an in-joke between a couple who were very much in love.

Am I wrong? Is it problematic for couples to make in-jokes that refer to past problematic situations in a mutual pact to take ownership over them? Or am I mis-reading what was portrayed?

So true!!!!
Gosh let’s stay away from Friends….lets not start that one 🤣🤣 Love Actually’s done me in…😆

When Hugh Grant wants to sack Natalie his assistant says ‘the chubby girl?’ he says he doesn’t think she’s chubby and she says ‘oh there is a pretty sizeable arse there! huge thighs!’ Then when she jumps on him in the airport he says ‘you weigh a lot!’

I love a good "...-ist" thread about something that was in the cinema or on TV decades ago.

I think someone should do a DPhil in "Critical "...-ist Theory"

My family member has cerebral palsy. She’s one of the strongest people I’ve ever met, plenty of fortitude, very thick skin and not at all easily offended and she absolutely hates that word and finds it very upsetting to hear it used.
She has fought her entire life to not be discriminated against. She fought to be included in mainstream education at secondary level after she did primary education in a “remedial clinic” and had to endure this word amongst others shouted at her in the hallways - it took a lot to keep going and get her exams in the end.
Just because you have your experience and don’t have strong feelings about that word doesn’t mean everyone else should be okay with it.

Every single Christmas someone starts a thread here where they are shocked by Love Actually. It's a MN tradition .

To be fair to @Jabtastic she literally was trying to write her post and it got held as she spelt out the word!
Your family member sounds amazing! 🌸🌺
I can honestly say; having started this post on the fact that I hate the word being used in the film, no one has disagreed… they’ve pointed out that it’s just a film, watch it don’t watch it.. but no one on here has condoned the use of that horrid word 🌸

In the first example he refutes the attempted fat-shaming. The second example is what - to me, at least - seems very much an in-joke between a couple who are very much in love. Maybe I'm fantastically weird but I've definitely had in-jokes with people I've been in relationships with, at least some of which have been about particular insecurities and for which the in-joke has been a shorthand for "I know this has been problematic for you in the past but I want you to know that I accept it, and you, for what you are" kind of thing.

Isn't that the whole point about the narrative thread about their relationship? Natalie's a beautiful, kind, funny, lovable, "opposites attract" kind of woman who David falls for pretty much instantly but who many other people instantly dismiss simply because of her supposed weight problem? Something that he doesn't care about and repeatedly defends her against? Instead, he sees her as a desirable, lovable person despite the pigeon-holing that other people do to her?

I mean, if you said that the inappropriateness about their relationship was the whole power imbalance thing between a Prime Minister and an aide (with all of its Clinton/Lewinsky connotations) then, sure, you'd probably have a point. But her weight? I really don't see it.

It was rubbish then and it's still rubbish now. Curtis is a hack who makes films for people who like to think they're upper middle class.

This 👆

I loved it when it came out and I still love it. But I view films as….films, not real life. So, in the same way I don’t expect a dinosaur to suddenly appear in my front garden, or to watch a man scale the side of a 50 storey building wearing jeans and a flattering tank top, or a total weirdo in a scary mask to appear in my bedroom….its fiction, not real life.
I am not racist, or sexist or misogynistic. I am also not the prime minister, I am unlikely to travel to America in search of sex, I wouldn’t shag my husbands brother and I wouldn’t, as an office junior, or anything else actually, crack on to boss. I also do not think Natalie was fat. But I think that was kind of the point….

I've always thought it was awful, I don't think it's dated badly I thought all the things pp have mentioned at the time it came out. Richard Curtis's films are generally a bit problematic imo, 4 Weddings is probably the best of them, of course lots of people love them but there's no accounting for taste.

Agree! Have always loathed it. It’s a slimy middle-aged man’s idea of romance.