Love, Actually was released in late 2003 and quickly became one of the most popular Christmas films, providing audiences with various iconic scenes, most notably Hugh Grant dancing to Jump by Girls Aloud.
As an avid lover of Love, Actually, I can appreciate the faults of the film and let’s be honest, there are many. Each storyline is fatally flawed (if you need a quick recap Brig writer Alex Paterson gave us a ranking of the different storylines last year, and she is definitely correct).
20 years later the film has maintained its popularity, but many people are starting to notice aspects that are considered problematic by today’s standards.
The problem
The whole film centres around love, which may seem obvious considering the title. However, you probably wouldn’t realise it if it wasn’t for Hugh Grant reminding us in the voiceover.
Even though the film is about the various forms of love in different circumstances – platonic, romantic and familial – lots of the characters seem to hate the people they’re supposedly in love with.
There seems to be an obsession in this film with male characters just being awful towards the female characters. Harry basically cheats on Karen (the heart and soul of the film); Natalie is constantly fat shamed by those around her and The Prime Minister discards of her after the President assaults her; and then there’s the entire character of Colin Frissel.
While these are very brief explanations of what happens, they pretty much sum up the attitudes of the characters, they’re absolutely awful, but you can’t help but love them.
The thing with Love, Actually is that despite the sometimes cliché plot points, it is also quite a realistic portrayal of some relationships and it explores different problems that people are faced with.
The heart-breaking scenes
Of course, Karen and Harry’s is the most heart-breaking storyline of them all, Harry is by far the most evil character Alan Rickman ever played (I don’t care about Severus Snape, Judge Turpin or Hans Gruber, Harry is the worst).
Hearing Joni Mitchell starting to play as Emma Thompson cries and is then forced to compose herself before she goes to the school play with her family? Now that’s a guaranteed tear-jerker.
What else is heart-breaking is Laura Linney’s storyline as Sarah, who has been deeply in love with her co-worker Karl for a while. While tensions arise at the work Christmas party, things ultimately don’t work out when she has to leave Karl to look after her brother with special needs. This is such a sad storyline which could’ve been explored further, Sarah deserved a happy life with Karl!!
It’s also disappointing that the film was meant to include an older, lesbian couple played by Anna Reid and Frances De La Tour, who was suffering with a terminal illness. This would’ve been a great opportunity for more diversity in the characters and no doubt another heart-breaking storyline. It’s quite disappointing that this was considered less of value than other storylines such as, let’s just say for example, Colin Frissel.
Colin is great for comedic relief if you have the worst sense of humour. Seriously. The only funny thing his character does is say that he’s from Basildon, and that’s only because I live up the road from there. The whole purpose of his character is showing how this rather unappealing guy can pull lots of attractive models in America just with his accent. It’s ridiculous, and maybe funny to some, I just can’t understand why this was chosen over a more touching storyline.
But we still love it…
Despite all of its faults, Love, Actually remains my favourite Christmas film after all of these years and I honestly can’t tell you why. It’s full of clichés and overdone tropes, the characters are awful, the storylines are kind of ridiculous, but it works. It makes me feel warm, it tells me Christmas is a time for sharing love and being optimistic, it melts my frozen heart.
Plus, Hugh Grant as the Prime Minister is one of the greatest cinematic experiences ever, and Bill Nighy’s character (rockstar Billy Mack) makes up for any of the other faults with the film. With such a strong, iconic cast it was a guaranteed hit. That is most likely the reason it has managed to maintain its popularity, if not solely for Emma Thompson.
Feature image credit: Universal Pictures
