Unhappy 21st, Love Actually

Monday is about movies, and sometimes TV. Today, a most unhappy birthday to the worst rom com, worst Xmas film, and worst big budget, high-expectation film of all time. Of all time.

Love Actually just turned 21. The film that most needs to grow the fuck up, just had a chance to do 21 shots, or a yardie, and I’m only disappointed we didn’t hear of a public disgrace so enormous the film somehow unspooled, completely wiping itself out from the collective memory.

Love Actually is almost a film I love to hate. Only seen it once. Will never watch it again. Would rather bamboo shoots up my nose, and Six60 playing the stadium once a month and both of those things timed a day apart; it would be better if Robbie Williams returned to New Zealand every year and I had to be his driver…

When Love Actually was released, I didn’t rush to see it. I already knew on some level it was not for me. But eventually I decided to check it out, on the new/ish medium of the day, DVD. I kept waiting for the bit where it ‘got good’. So many people had been charmed by it, had told me it was lovely, had suggested I might like it.

These people did not know me.

Cloying half-story after cloying half-story filled the screen. Hammy one note actors paraded about for a bit. Bill Nighy has one thing he does — and it’s so grossly overrated. Hugh Grant has, admittedly, become truly ‘something’ after this, by leaning into his inner grump, but that’s also almost run its course now. It’s filled with also-rans that were somehow elevated. Keira Knightley, Emma Thompson, Colin Firth. Even Roman Atkinson can piss off, actually. Really, the only person worth anything in this film as an actor is Laura Linney. Although this was back when Liam Neeson was not broken and in a loop playing the same role. So he did some pretty good acting here too. But it’s somewhat cruel that he had to play a man grieving the death of his wife; some meta-future dystopia training for a future real-life event; that real-life event means we now have Liam Neeson forever replaying his Taken role in ever decreasing circles.

Alan Rickman is particularly creepy and embarrassing in this film — since he had something (mostly just a voice), but here he is positively awful.

And just what the fuck was that whole Joni Mitchell CD sequence. It’s like the plastic bag scene from American Beauty, in the Pretty Sure It’s Profound stakes.

I was outraged by that use of Joni at that time, thinking that would be the introduction to her music for many. But twenty years on, maybe that’s the only good thing to have come from Love Actually. It possibly did introduce a bunch of people to Joni Mitchell’s work, and allowed them to plough on from there, dig deeper. And maybe they did. I cannot judge that. I should only celebrate that.

My biggest beef with Love Actually though, is how monumentally depressing it is. A giant bummer of a film. A stinking turd of a ‘rom com’. People still talk about it being funny, or lovely. And it’s neither. It’s nasty minded, and everyone in it is fucking awful and it is just utterly, utterly miserable and stupid. It’s billed as “Very Romantic” which it isn’t. And “Very Comedy” — get absolutely fucked now!

But there are better things you could read about this film. The wonderful Lindy West named her book of film reviews and commentary, Shit, Actually after an essay of the same name. It’s a scathing, accurate, hilarious piece, now housed in an excellent book. And if you Google, I’m sure you’ll find better, brutal take-downs, in and around the fawning fan tributes.

But every year now we have Love Actually screenings — they’ve even started doing it with the musical score live, as if to further elevate it. And look, there’s absolutely nothing there. Promise. Just as Coldplay is the Beach House Art of music, and Moore Wilson’s is the Coldplay of supermarkets, Love Actually is Coldplay in cinema form; big budget and promising so much and capturing just enough of the mainstream to march blind behind it and shout loudly that it must have a point.

That’s what I hate most about it. The cynicism. The decision to make this fluff and bolt it to a Christmas theme to make the money, and give it a recurring role in the culture. Fuck you Richard Curtis!

Anyway, I am placing this here as a starter for your Love Actually conversation. I want to hear from fans of the film. And detractors. I don’t want you to fight one another with anything other than words in support of or against this film. You love it, or you loathe it, you don’t hate one another. So share your thoughts on this Christmas turkey down below…