also the dude making torture traps and a little tricycle puppet seems way more likeable and relatable than the weird stalker who fucked up the wedding recording then showed up to the brides house with his fucking manifesto
Minor point (and I'm not saying this is better), but he didn't fuck up the wedding recording. They had a videographer. The video he took was for... personal use, I suppose. 😬
Divorce? What divorce? He screwed up, realized the hurt he caused, and tried to fix it and recover that love. She had far more trouble forgiving him, but love for her family drove her to work through it.
This movie requires work to see the dozens of examples of love, some happy,some broken
Nah, man, she had just gone thru her real divorce with a cheater (Branagh) so she brought true emotions to the movie. The movie was one thing, I mean - but she's amazing in everything
I was shocked to learn how mad all the women in my life are at Alan Rickman’s character. Not surprised that they hate a philandering pompous ass, but the white hot intensity that returns every year was something of which I was not fully aware.
Anger-wise I think it has more to do with watching Emma Thompson realize her marriage is dead, and then have to immediately shove all those feelings back inside and pretend everything is fine.
It’s notable that the movie is trying *so hard* to make the woman he has the affair with out to be the bad guy but that storyline is so cartoonish that everyone just hates him.
I don't know, I think the whole gift scene shoots that right in the foot. Rickman stood in a department store for like 48 years while his children played near by, to get a gift for his mistress. She didn't make him. From that moment it's not "she seduced me" and instead "I premediated my adultery."
I always hear that it’s a great movie but I tell ya…after about 20 min I had to turn it off! I’m shocked by how awful it is & actually thought there was something wrong with me for not getting it! Glad to know I’m not alone!😂
I watched it for the first time a few years ago and couldn't believe *that* was what so many people seem to love. I felt alone and googled and found everything I was thinking all laid out into words...you'll probably enjoy this as much as I did.
What's wrong with you is that it's a complicated intertwining of many different kinds of love, with lust mistaken as love, people making mistakes that hurt those they love, then trying to right the mistakes, basically love good and bad, but you expected to understand it all in only 20 minutes.
Never seen it yet
However
The villains in SawX was a group of scammers tricking terminal cancer patients out of hundreds of thousands for treatment
Saw 6 denied a guy health insurance for having a cyst surgery and died also fun fact Rodrick was the og Luigi mangione
Many of the characters in that movie are trash humans. I'm not generally into rom-coms, Love Actually is an exception due to the excellent cast and soundtrack.
Hugh Grant called it a "psychotic" film and we'd agree. Rewatched it FFing through the cringey parts, which improved it considerably (you know the ones).
I don’t watched this with my daughters and despite all the happy endings they could not get over the husbands betrayal of his committed wife with his younger hotter assistant.
This is why i defend the movie...Because... sometimes love does turn cruel.
Sometimes you stupidly or selflessly sacrifice for love. Sometimes you cheat on love. Sometimes you make a fool out of yourself for it. It's all messy and beautiful and hard....
In Love Actually, the President of the United States is a sexual predator, a warmonger, and has no respect for our foreign allies. It’s very cruel of that movie to remind us of reality when it should entertain us.
Checking Alan Rickmans filmography, his top 11 films are xmas films, die hard, galaxy quest, love actually and those (because the Harry potter ones taken place year round though)
It happens to many a good person in real life. Some people just don't appreciate what they have. On the other hand some people don't deserve any better.
No it's Rickman. At the moment, I'll despise the actor as well as their character because somewhere in the actor they pulled from their potential of cruelty. That's the terrible beauty of acting. Afterwards it subsides and I'm ok with the unproblematic actor.
it shows realistic relationships that are imperfect/acted on awkwardly. there are so many interactions and feelings that you don't see in other media, because they're portraying relatable instances of 'love' in all its forms. this is highlighted by all the ppl in the airport at the beginning & end
When I reread Shakespeare, I'm reminded he is the master of cruelty. Stunning language. One word can rip your heart out. The older I get, the deeper my understanding.
The scenes in Portugal are rendered like Borat level Kazakhstan. I genuinely expected the Dad to try and flog his daughter to Colin Firth for a donkey.
Completing missing how good most young Portuguese people’s English is.
Is it bad that I'm Portuguese but I love that storyline? I'm like "famous actor speak my language horribly wow😍" Fully aware of how problematic it is. If she's the daughter of pt immigrants in France I would buy that she doesn't speak English but it's stranger that she doesn't speak French.
And that he doesn’t speak any French either is mad. He’s clearly had an education, maybe an expensive one and almost all children in the UK do French for a few years.
Sorry but having been an immigrant in the UK, and with a French speaking partner, I totally buy that he speaks only broken French 😅 Learning it at school and speaking it are two very different things
British people are poor with languages, for sure, but some get an education with several Latinate languages. I suspect his character would be one of those. He could have at least franglaised his feelings for her. Also, if she grew up in France again she’s likely to have learned English at school. 😀
I rewatched it because personal punishment, and decided that the prime minister affair was a scandal was due to class issues and not body issues. She's from the dodgy end, no?
The main thing I remember from seeing it in a theater in Brooklyn at the time was as we were walking out I overheard a snippet of conversation behind me--". . . seriously! She looked like a GHOST beside him!" and I obviously knew which characters they were talking about
I’m still trying to figure out the timeline. What week is it? What day is it? What hour of the day is it? No, it can’t be that. No way those plot moments occur within those points in time.
If I ever get past that, maybe I can confront the actual social issues at stake.
I watched about a minute of the first one and turned it off
Years later a coworker called in sick because he and his wife went to the midnight opening of Saw 1000🤷♂️
Watching it this year I was thinking that maybe one of the reasons it's so problematic is because cramming so many storylines into one movie means that you need to find tension with very little screentime, and so you make the characters flawed and fall into some problematic stereotypical themes
But it could be said that it's what makes the movie engaging, despite those storytelling limitations. Not to defend it really, a lot of why it's bad is a product of it's time, and it's totally unnecessary. This movie is a true guilty pleasure for me 😅
I think you're on to something. In a world of memes, a complicated movie will be completely misunderstood. Especially now that we've learned that everything must be adored or hated instantly. The option to form an aggregate opinion is lost.
Yeah that's a good point and this movie really does represent that for me. I can appreciate the parts where it shines (like the casting, photography, Christmas spirit, and more out of the box interpretations of love), while twisting my nose at the problematic bits like the sexism and fatphobia (1/2)
(2/2) While also recognising at least some of the things that make characters unlikeable or problematic are necessary points of tension for certain storylines to weave the points they're trying to make about the real natura of love in all its forms, some of them quite complex
I love it, rewatch every year. High Grant awesome, Liam Neeson awesome. Love Keira Knightly, love Laura Linney’s character. Love Bill Nighy. I think for us older demographic we get it Wouldn’t hold up by todays societal standards but we enjoy the parts that are funny and tender.
I don't know why it draws so much hate. I was recommended this movie by a girlfriend and a female relative. It has more male perspective than most, i guess...would be interesting to see which of the several story lines is considered evil (or rank by evilness), and why.
I lecture on movies at senior residences to predominantly female audiences and have never gotten a single complaint about "Love Actually." (And they're not shy if they didn't like the film.)
It's okay not to like a popular movie (as a critic I've done so) but they're over the top.
I believe Mrs. Wynn was using a technique called "comedic hyperbole" to point out that many of the characters in Love Actually are pretty crappy people treating each other in a horrible way.
People telling me it wasn’t as bad when it first came out didn’t see it when it first came out or they were kids. Cause it’s always been sexist and inhumane af.
Really need to watch that movie again 🤔
Saw it once over a decade ago and what I remember the most is how Emma Thompson finds the necklace and then gets the Joni Mitchell CD... 🫢
Her storyline was the most ‘real’ of all of them, and she didn’t get a happy ending while the random dude who wanted to get laid and the little boy did.
And that says something about the whole damned movie
Comments
I still think there should have been a Liam and Emma romance blooming in my rewritten in my head movie
This movie requires work to see the dozens of examples of love, some happy,some broken
I still think there is a good movie in there with the trash, they just didn’t let the good movie breathe. Emma Thompson deserved better
She's his employee for God's sake, couldn't speak with English and so is vulnerable.
And he only loves her when he saw her stripped to save his notes in the pool.
However
The villains in SawX was a group of scammers tricking terminal cancer patients out of hundreds of thousands for treatment
Saw 6 denied a guy health insurance for having a cyst surgery and died also fun fact Rodrick was the og Luigi mangione
It could have been a great movie if they had just focused
Nor do I think much of it counts as ‘love’ for that matter
Sometimes you stupidly or selflessly sacrifice for love. Sometimes you cheat on love. Sometimes you make a fool out of yourself for it. It's all messy and beautiful and hard....
But it IS actually all around.
https://youtu.be/rAa3zP1ysqo?si=i21QdTs8eY7wDRjd
...so you don't have to.
https://m.soundcloud.com/john-lynker/sets/love-or-limerence
Plus the flirty secretary was problematic too. Who seduces their married boss like that? It's pure fantasy.
Well, one of the Jigsaw killers. Jigsaw got really hands off as he started dying. Really, he should not have. Went badly.
Completing missing how good most young Portuguese people’s English is.
It's a reoccurring bit in one our best loved sitcoms.
https://youtu.be/mh_ePgI4n3Y?si=ID9o78uHzii0eHlG
Very class coded.
Is this analogous?
If I ever get past that, maybe I can confront the actual social issues at stake.
One is about intentional pointless cruelty brought about by one’s own actions or inactions.
The other is the Saw franchise.
Years later a coworker called in sick because he and his wife went to the midnight opening of Saw 1000🤷♂️
This Is why America died
Another point made that some people are superficial and miss out on love because of it, while true love doesn't care about appearance.
Without showing the ugly side of relationships, it's just another Hallmark movie
Some might say that they're problematic.
Colin's story arc with the American women looked so porno, I half expected them to be killers with Colin as their victim.
I think if I would see saw
I would flip
“Ooh, is that Norah Jones? I love this song!”
And it’s over and we’re back to old nakey Brit rocker dangling his Gibson for all the world to see!
The "Saw" movies are Nazi sadism. "Love Actually" is a great romantic comedy.
It's okay not to like a popular movie (as a critic I've done so) but they're over the top.
It's our first Christmas film every year.
Saw it once over a decade ago and what I remember the most is how Emma Thompson finds the necklace and then gets the Joni Mitchell CD... 🫢
And that says something about the whole damned movie
You can argue Home Alone falls into that, by the very star himself.