I saw Love, Actually for the first time a few years ago, under the guidance/compulsion of my then-girlfriend-now-wife. I didn’t dislike the movie so much as I found it enjoyable (if somewhat creepy) and, ultimately, rather forgettable.
I therefore found myself agreeing with Mary Elizabeth Williams’ assessment of the film:
With the exception of Bill Nighy’s witty plotline about an aging pop star’s attempt to secure the coveted Christmas No. 1 hit, every one of the 85 other stories in the movie involves some horrible lesson out of the battle of the sexes playbook. If you were an alien watching “Love, Actually,” you would come to the conclusion that what human British men really, really want are hot chicks who fetch them tea, put up with their dalliances, and don’t speak English.
Which of the many story lines is most likely to make a reasonable human want to get drunk on lighter fluid? There’s Colin Firth’s – the one about a man who, betrayed by his cheating girlfriend, flees the country and immediately falls for his mug-brandishing Portuguese housekeeper. So pretty! So uncommunicative! And she has hot beverages! See also: the Hugh Grant story line, in which the prime minister falls for the assistant who brings him tea. Seriously, what is with you dudes? Do you not know how to boil water?
There’s also the Alan Rickman story line, about the married man tempted by the unbelievably predatory secretary, and the heartbroken wife (Emma Thompson) faced with the choice to “stay, knowing life would always be a little bit worse.” There’s the Laura Linney one, about the noble woman who can’t be with the man she loves because she has to care for her mentally ill brother. And doesn’t that make an interesting contrast to the Liam Neeson plot, in which a very recent widower is rewarded for his emotional pain by hooking up with Claudia Schiffer. Claudia Schiffer!! There’s also Kris Marshall’s, in which a lonely, goofy-looking Brit flies to America to dazzle the ladies solely on the basis of his Britishness – and immediately scores a pile of insanely hot babes. And yet they call crap like this a “chick flick.” I’ve seen less depressing Michael Haneke movies.
Lindy West offers a similar deconstruction at Jezebel. I think people have amply covered how certain storylines (Colin Firth‘s, Alan Rickman‘s, and that ginger dude‘s, for example) are weirdly creepy, but I will note that the Laura Linney/Rodrigo Santoro subplot at least flips the script on the “coveting from afar” trope.
I still don’t get why they couldn’t try hooking up again another time, unless this is one of those “the moment has passed” sort of things.
Love, Actually did spawn this amusing, if never-aired, SNL spoof:
I do still feel like I need to take issue with the movie’s ongoing insistence that Martine McCutcheon‘s character is somehow unattractively “fat.”
It’s even a drinking game. Martine Mc–freaking–Cutcheon.
It’s probably worth noting, though, that Netflix is removing Love, Actually from its streaming service on January 1.
