Jezebel, Actually
December 19, 2013 8:40 AM   Subscribe

 
Why am I coming across hate pieces about Love Actually all over the place lately? Was there a special director's cut re-release or something?
posted by yoink at 8:44 AM on December 19, 2013 [21 favorites]


Because it's still shite?

I'm just guessing, I've never actually watched a Richard Curtis film. I did see his Dr Who episode, which was great until they served up a mawkish coda garnished with extra schmaltz.
posted by mippy at 8:46 AM on December 19, 2013


It is a christmas movie. Christmas is in 4 days.
posted by elizardbits at 8:47 AM on December 19, 2013 [5 favorites]


It's Christmas and bloggers have deadlines. Plus, these are films young 20s grew up liking and so have a perverse joy in hating in detail.

As an FYI, I found the blog funny enough to post but a bit try hard in places.
posted by litleozy at 8:47 AM on December 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


Why am I coming across hate pieces about Love Actually all over the place lately?

It came out in 2003 so there's lots of 10 year anniversary pieces.
posted by ndfine at 8:50 AM on December 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


It's the 10th anniversary of the film.
posted by sweetkid at 8:51 AM on December 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


I think this movie would make the perfect stalking stuffer!

Er, I meant stocking.
posted by Atom Eyes at 8:51 AM on December 19, 2013 [6 favorites]


I love all this; but I love "cock-blocktopus" MOST.
posted by bonaldi at 8:53 AM on December 19, 2013 [25 favorites]


C'mon, two, maybe three of the dozen plotlines can reasonably be described as "celebrating stalking". That's only ~25% of them.

I still love the movie
posted by Elementary Penguin at 8:54 AM on December 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


I've read some Love Actually takedowns that I agreed with, but this sort of hate-piece just makes me love the film more. YES, I love airports! YES, I want to ponder the precise dilation of Bill Nighy's butthole! etc.
posted by muddgirl at 8:55 AM on December 19, 2013 [6 favorites]


I mean, how can Rowan Atkinson NOT be a far too fastidious Selfridges assistant?

GAH NOW I NEED TO REWATCH IT
posted by litleozy at 8:56 AM on December 19, 2013 [8 favorites]


It is a christmas movie. Christmas is in 4 days.

Firstly: 4 days? What time zone are you in?

Secondly--yeah, sure, it's a Christmas movie. It's not like there aren't a billion others, many of them egregiously dreadful. And even the 'ten year anniversary' thing is weird. Since when do we mark the ten year anniversaries of shitty movies?
posted by yoink at 8:57 AM on December 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


I still love it despite all the hate, all the problematic aspects. There are tons of things we all love that are fraught with issues. Love, Actually is but one of them.
posted by Kitteh at 8:59 AM on December 19, 2013 [6 favorites]


i'm in the time zone where it has been christmas since 23:59 on 11/30/13.
posted by elizardbits at 9:00 AM on December 19, 2013 [5 favorites]


That being said, there is no reason why this can't get tacked onto the current Love, Actually thread that is still open.
posted by Kitteh at 9:06 AM on December 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


If that's not the epitome of unexamined privilege—declaring that the airport is your favorite place—then I don't know what is.

Well, isn't that a bunch of shite. I love airports more than is probably healthy, and it has nothing to do with unexamined privilege. It's due to a love of aircraft and all things associated with it. Most of the time I'm at an airport I'm not flying; I just like being there.

Which, you know, made this a blissfully short article for me.
posted by heyho at 9:06 AM on December 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


I find it is very helpful to keep Jezebel articles in the same mental headspace as links to the Daily Mail.
posted by elizardbits at 9:08 AM on December 19, 2013 [20 favorites]


Secondly--yeah, sure, it's a Christmas movie. It's not like there aren't a billion others, many of them egregiously dreadful. And even the 'ten year anniversary' thing is weird. Since when do we mark the ten year anniversaries of shitty movies?

The problem isn't that it's dreadful. The problem is that it's crushingly mediocre. It has no emotional impact because none of the stories are well-developed (and some -- namely, Colin Firth's -- make little sense at all) and the larger point is pretty weak. In fact, the larger point about love existing in various, messy forms is hard to really agree with at the end because we've been deprived of any real connection to the characters at all. So, it has some high points but really it's just amusing way to spend a couple of hours without investing too much of your energy. The real mystery is why anyone cares about it much in either direction.
posted by CoureurDubois at 9:10 AM on December 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


Which, you know, made this a blissfully short article for me.

Well, you missed out; amongst all the snark, the article also repeatedly nails the godawful problems the movie has with female agency:
Colin Firth falls in "love" with Aurelia at first sight, establishing Love Actually's central moral lesson: The less a woman talks, the more lovable she is.

None of the women in this movie fucking talk. All of the men in this movie "win" a woman at the end. This goddamn movie.
Kermode keeps banging on about how much he loves this movie; and each time he does, a little bit of my respect for him dies.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 9:12 AM on December 19, 2013 [14 favorites]


I Rewatched Love Actually And Am Here To Ruin It All For You

it was ruined for me when I saw it back in the day, or as I already commented in a still current thread (talking about Four Weddings + a Funeral) but it's mostly still in context ...

Because beneath its veneer of quality (the Brits are so good at that), it's an ugly, ugly film. Or as a British friend put it -- [...] He thought the movie would've worked far better as a period piece, set in Nazi Germany with all the key characters either members of the Nazi party, or certainly war profiteers. Every now and then, when things got truly hilarious, you could have a train full of cattle cars trundling past in the background.
posted by philip-random at 9:13 AM on December 19, 2013 [13 favorites]


In all fairness to Kermode, his love of Thompson blinds him to some of the film's flaws and she is fucking magnificent in it.
posted by litleozy at 9:15 AM on December 19, 2013 [4 favorites]


she is fucking magnificent in it

As is Laura Linney, but that could be said of pretty much any film either of them are in.
posted by TwoWordReview at 9:20 AM on December 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


Secondly--yeah, sure, it's a Christmas movie. It's not like there aren't a billion others, many of them egregiously dreadful.

But Love Actually tended to be well-reviewed in its time, and remains fondly remembered. Thus some revision is to be expected.

As suggested above, I already had issues with it before I started watching, because it was a Richard Curtis film. And yeah, he makes a certain kind of warmly reassuring movie very well. Except (and here I think you need to be either British or to have lived there for a while to get this) they don't reflect a remotely real world even as they make deal of pretending to, working all of that subtle verisimilitude. It's not just the love-will-always blather (that's hardly unique to Curtis), it's the representation of Britain as a sort of milquetoast middle class culture ... and this just isn't the case. It's a deeply divided culture in all kinds of ugly ways with all the old class bullshit alive and kicking.
posted by philip-random at 9:31 AM on December 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


Since when do we mark the ten year anniversaries of shitty movies?

I think it gets the attention because it's the only example of a movie made in the 21st century that has somewhat worked its way into the canon of significant Christmas films.
posted by ndfine at 9:31 AM on December 19, 2013


>The lady is named Aurelia and she only speaks Portuguese, and so does her entire family, apparently, even though all of them live in France. It's irritating.

Dude, seriously? You need to hang out with some actual immigrant communities, #checkyourprivilegejeez. Would we consider that to be insensitive if they were a visible minority?

And I'm pretty sure I recall them all living in an idiosyncratic neighborhood in Lisbon (rather than the tiny village in the middle of nowhere she's statistically more likely to be coming from).

(Not so interesting side note: it was extremely amusing to me how every portuguese actor was easily recognizable, though of course no one else I've known has ever cared. My first reaction upon being forced to watch that turd of a movie was "zomg Lúcia Moniz! Man, I haven't thought of you in forever")
posted by pmv at 9:35 AM on December 19, 2013 [3 favorites]


Didn't we do this thread last week, but based on a better written article that wasn't full of ?!?!?
posted by biffa at 9:37 AM on December 19, 2013 [6 favorites]


My wife *loves* to hatewatch bad romantic comedies. I can't believe we haven't seen this yet, but I will take steps to rectify that at our earliest convenience.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:38 AM on December 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


Why am I coming across hate pieces about Love Actually all over the place lately? Was there a special director's cut re-release or something?

I have learned in the last couple of weeks that there is apparently a vast network of people who hold passionate views, both pro- and anti-, on the fourth most successful romcom of the year from a decade ago. Are there bitter partisan struggles (of which I remain happily unaware) about "Legally Blonde 2" and "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" as well?
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:41 AM on December 19, 2013 [5 favorites]


The Hairpin recently had a Love Actually week feature on their site.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 9:45 AM on December 19, 2013


I think because there's lots of celebrities in it and a lot of little subplots it makes the movie more a thing to write about than say, "How To Lose a Guy in Ten Days." I'm not saying that makes it compelling but I understand where it's coming from. People like stuff like anniversaries and snarky and sappy articles about romcoms and celebrity discussions and Christmas movies.
posted by sweetkid at 9:50 AM on December 19, 2013


Are there bitter partisan struggles (of which I remain happily unaware) about "Legally Blonde 2" and "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" as well?

Well, LB2 was probably partly at fault for the painfully shrill Legally Blonde: the Musical (but maybe paved the way for other (better?) recent movie-to-musical adaptations) and How to Lose a Whatever in Whenever was referenced in a book that (MeFi's own) Linda Holmes just recommended, so they're not totally irrelevant, but they also weren't A Cultural Thing the way this mishmash of Brits Behaving Badly was.
posted by psoas at 9:53 AM on December 19, 2013


Some of the article is silly, but the stuff about how a number of the plotlines are essentially "Triumph of the Fedora Wearers" is spot on. I get that it's part of the rom-com trope that stalking is ok and chicks actually really dig it and complaining about the "friend zone" is the way to a woman's heart, but this movie has that disease far worse than most.
posted by The Bellman at 9:56 AM on December 19, 2013


Three cases of a man chasing an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate (in fact, the one who works for the Prime Minister is punished and re-assigned due to his attraction to her). Maybe four. Incessant fat jokes against a shapely young woman. I don't know how I liked this movie the first time.
posted by mkb at 9:58 AM on December 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


Looking forwards to the Bridget Jone's Diary attack peices.
posted by Artw at 10:02 AM on December 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


I think this post says much the same thing, only way more concisely: The plot lines of ‘Love Actually’ ranked from most to least disturbing.
posted by marshmallow peep at 10:03 AM on December 19, 2013 [8 favorites]


So the other day on Metafilter someone in a Christmas movie thread mentioned watching Love Actually repeatedly. I'd never seen it but Lo it came to pass on AMC three days ago so I DVR'd it.

I am watching it. right. now.
posted by maggieb at 10:04 AM on December 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


One my favorite things about my wife is that she despises this movie and this kind of movie in general. Disliking it isn't even hard, it's painfully clumsy and borderline offensive. It's like a Tommy Wiseau joint directed by Garry Marshall. This is a next-level bad movie, so bad its worse than bad. Either you cheerfully acknowledge that it's highly questionable (as people here are doing so fair play) and enjoy it because of that silliness OR somehow try to defend it as a serious film with truisms to teach about adult relationships in which case you should turn in your pop culture taste card to the front desk and see yourself out.

But yeah the fucking guy with the notecards at the door TO ME YOU ARE PERFECT and the fucking "Nice Bloke" gettin it on with FOUR HOT SORORITY SISTERS YOWZA WAKKA WAKKA COMEDY how can a woman watch that and not want to castrate/enslave all men it makes no sense to me.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:06 AM on December 19, 2013 [8 favorites]


I am watching it. right. now.

Noooo get out while you can!!!! Just smash your tv with a hammer and jump out the window never look back!
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:07 AM on December 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


Eh, I don't need an airport-hating "journalist" to school me in sexism. Ha ha ha... trust me on this one.

It is literally impossible for me to follow the logic of this sentence.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 10:09 AM on December 19, 2013 [7 favorites]


Oh hi I'm the Chief of Staff for the leader of a powerful nation, I'm a black woman who knows her shit, and I'm very qualified. One thing I like to do is casually mention to my boss how disgusting overweight females in the office are, and graphically describe their body parts in demeaning ways. So that's me. What's your deal?
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:10 AM on December 19, 2013 [10 favorites]


somehow try to defend it as a serious film with truisms to teach about adult relationships in which case you should turn in your pop culture taste card to the front desk and see yourself out.

This person does not exist, do they? I've certainly seen links to about 100 of these "Love Actually sucks!" articles this year, and exactly 0 "Love Actually is a serious film with truisms to teach about adult relationships" articles.
posted by muddgirl at 10:15 AM on December 19, 2013 [4 favorites]


I agree muddgirl I haven't heard much of that online, but I have known some who did say it, often. Of course there are others who base their political theories on like, Die Hard, so yeah, many cards are owed to the front desk from many departments.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:20 AM on December 19, 2013


I really enjoyed reading this even though I generally dislike Jezebel and have never really seen Love Actually.
posted by threeants at 10:34 AM on December 19, 2013


Lindy West shouldn't count as a part of Jezebel, because she is a genius and a wonderful person and every word that she keyboards is gold mixed with puppies.
posted by Rory Marinich at 10:39 AM on December 19, 2013 [4 favorites]


To be honest, I really just don't understand why anyone has ever liked the movie, and thus why any take-down is even necessary. I guess I already assumed that people who like/d it realize that it is crap (and, not even like, campy crap).
posted by likeatoaster at 10:46 AM on December 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


I agree with it all except for the comment about Keira Knightley's hat. And have plenty of my own comments to add to it, so much so that I could write a completely different piece in this vein. I mean, that scene with Colin in a bar in the States? The first time I saw Love Actually, I was convinced that was a fantasy sequence.
posted by orange swan at 10:47 AM on December 19, 2013 [4 favorites]


gold mixed with puppies

So ... like a Puppy Bowl version of the fate of Viserys Targaryen?
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 10:47 AM on December 19, 2013


Thanks, Bunny, you spoiled A Game of Thrones for me.

(Just kidding as soon as I saw "Ice and Fire" I hit the back button. Now your comment merely makes no sense to me.)
posted by Rory Marinich at 10:49 AM on December 19, 2013


It is a christmas movie. Christmas is in 4 days.

The fuck it is.

[checks date]

Oh fuck, it is!

I swear to gods I'm in some sort of time vortex. Wasn't it Thanksgiving just yesterday?
posted by five fresh fish at 10:50 AM on December 19, 2013 [4 favorites]


Now your comment merely makes no sense to me.

So, like the comment version of the Red Wedding?
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 10:58 AM on December 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


Correct me if it I'm wrong, but it's no earlier than the 20th anywhere on Planet E right now (11am Pacific time where I am -- Dec 19th). This makes Christmas at least five days away ... unless "Christmas" now means Christmas Eve.
posted by philip-random at 11:00 AM on December 19, 2013


On the Jewish calendar, that's exactly what it means, because the next day begins at nightfall, and because it is a lunar calendar, Christmas can fall anywhere between December 10th and January 18th, and because it's a Jewish calendar, Jesus is just some guy.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 11:05 AM on December 19, 2013 [5 favorites]


Assuming this hater didn't watch a different movie of the same name, I think they're mostly just burdening the movie with their own baggage. Which is fine - that's why so many people like this movie, it speaks to our baggage - but it means the criticisms seem petty at best, if not shocking.
Misinterpreting the guy who goes all out to give his friend marrying his secret crush the best wedding send-off he can, to be a guy trying to steal the bride from his friend on her wedding day?! I don't even...
I was about to suggest the critic had never been to a wedding between a good friend and a secret crush, then I had the horrifying remembrance that we often assume other people think like ourselves, and to have someone making such spectacularly ungenerous interpretations makes me wonder if I shouldn't instead be thinking back-away-from-that-person-slowly-and-make-no-sudden-moves.
In another contrast, where the critic saw a movie where the women are fluff, I saw a movie where women were unsung heros, mustering the most strength against the greatest adversity, without reward or recognition, and this plays to my own biases in that I think this is both common in our society and under-represented in movies. (Or at least, under-represented in films that are enjoyable popular viewing.)
The movie is decent christmas fare. The critic... I'm not so sure about.
posted by anonymisc at 11:09 AM on December 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


I generally dislike rom-coms and ensemble comedies, but I love this one unabashedly, unironically.

Wage the struggle against the right deviationist wing of reversing verdicts to the end!
posted by peripathetic at 11:11 AM on December 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


Christmas can fall anywhere between December 10th and January 18th

Wait, what? Xmas isn't one of those every 3rd Tuesday or 3 days after the second crescent moon holidays. It's always December 25th, which is 15 days after December 10th. Also, why use the Jewish calendar to calculate xmas anyway. Gregorian for life, bitches!
posted by nooneyouknow at 11:11 AM on December 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


You're not the boss of me! I'm going to use the Icelandic calendar, where months always start on the same day of the week, and where we celebrate Ýlir instead of Christmas, and it's a month long, and where we are threatened by a giant invisible cat!
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 11:16 AM on December 19, 2013 [6 favorites]


I do my own thinking, and I like pretty much everything Richard Curtis has done, particularly Blackadder and Four Weddings. Love Actually is an easy film to bash given the number of plot lines, none of which are conventional, and that all of them are lightly sketched in, leaving some ambiguity to the viewer.
posted by w0mbat at 11:18 AM on December 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


*raps knuckle lightly on desk* Ahem. *adjusts card inbox pointedly*
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:23 AM on December 19, 2013


Why am I coming across hate pieces about Love Actually all over the place lately?

Seasonal thing-that-lots-of-people-like-actually-sucks = click bait.
posted by anonymisc at 11:27 AM on December 19, 2013 [4 favorites]


I enjoyed the movie when I saw it in the theater with a friend. I even cried at the end and still tear up every time I hear "God Only Knows". However, a couple of years ago I attempted to rewatch it to recapture some of that warm feeling I originally had. I was horrified. All was revealed to me and the magnitude of my former delusions was unbelievable. Thinking of the timeline and implications of the Neeson and son plot alone is just awful. "Yeah, just burying mom is bad, but what really has me down is LOVE." Ugh.
posted by mimo at 11:30 AM on December 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


I've decided that the glee-filled Love Actually Bashfest is, at best, bean plating writ large.

Christ. It's a movie. Just a movie.
posted by Thistledown at 11:45 AM on December 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


I've decided that the glee-filled Love Actually Bashfest is A SURPRISINGLY FUN THING THAT I CAN DO AT WORK yay

Also Lindy 5eva
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 12:15 PM on December 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


I was all ready to hate on this until I reached the cock-blocktopus

And then it won me over. Love, Actually.
posted by chavenet at 12:25 PM on December 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


"Just" Is a Dangerous Word.
posted by mkb at 12:25 PM on December 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


"Milwaukee International"? I get why they had to do it (because hardly anyone really knows who General Billy Mitchell was, anyway), but it still bugs.

And I never liked this movie either; there's just too much suspension of disbelief expected from me that was a barrier to my enjoyment. My friends, however, cooed in the theater then and coo over it now. Ugh. But I forgive them.
posted by droplet at 12:30 PM on December 19, 2013


I am getting this damn shawl knitted before Christmas, and I swear to all the cheese in the world that I will jab a needle through the eye of anyone who tells me I only have four days. This will probably hold true even when "four" is an accurate count.

Also, I like Love Actually. It's sholocky, and it needs about 50% fewer dudes and 100% more women, but it also shows a bunch of relationships that we don't usually see. It's not a feel-good Christmas movie, it's about a bunch of messed-up people having moderately complicated (for a movie) lives and complicated relationships that don't always go the way they want them to.

Who the hell hasn't been a preteen kid with a desperate crush on someone you're too afraid to talk to? Who hasn't gone "Yeah, sad thing happened--but I'm REALLY SAD about much less sad thing that I actually have some control over"? I appreciate that Love Actually shows unrequited love guy--and that in the end, he doesn't "win" or whatever, he walks away and seems, if anything, sort of disgusted with himself. I appreciate that there's a guy who's being handed Trappings Of Fame, and he goes "you know, this isn't really what I want." I appreciate that Emma Thompson's character realises that her partner is cheating on her, and she realises, too, that she's not going to leave, and she has to keep Doing Holidays for her kids, because that's a thing that happens to people (has happened to me!) that you never see portrayed. You might see someone realise that their partner is cheating, but after that there are two narratives: groveling apologies, or self-righteous separation.

Are the stories pretty shallow? Yeah, of course they are. Cramming a dozen storylines into a two-hour movie pretty much requires that they be brief, and it is, after all, a movie. If you watch the deleted scenes on the DVD, you'll see that there were actually *more* storylines, initially--the one that stuck with me was about the headmistress of the boy's school, where she goes home to her (female) partner, who's clearly dying of cancer. A later scene, just before the school performance, made it clear that her partner had died over the course of the film. I understand why they cut it, but still wish they hadn't. It was so humanizing--the headmistress starts off as a stern, unsympathetic character, and suddenly it's clear that she's not just a horrible jerk, she's a person who's struggling, just like everyone else. Which, for me, is sort of what the whole movie is about.

Ok! I hate myself now, so I'm going to get back to that shawl.
posted by MeghanC at 12:33 PM on December 19, 2013 [18 favorites]


I kept expecting the movie to make some kind of effort to point out how silly it was that everyone kept calling the prime minister's secretary fat, until I realized that the movie actually agreed with them, and that we were supposed to find it endearing that Hugh Grant could fall in love with such a big ol' tubbo.
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:36 PM on December 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


I never saw it because it's a romantic comedy and I hate all romantic comedies as a general rule. There needs to be something really good about one to get me to see it.

....I did almost waver when I saw Liam Neeson was in it but then I learned his part wasn't as big as Hugh Grant's and thought "fuck this". (I have been waiting for years for that man to get a part as good as he had in Schindler's List. This wasn't gonna be it.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:38 PM on December 19, 2013


I'm going to use the Icelandic calendar, where months always start on the same day of the week, and where we celebrate Ýlir instead of Christmas, and it's a month long, and where we are threatened by a giant invisible cat!

I don't know if none, some, or all of that is true, and I kinda don't want to google and ruin the fun feeling I have right now.
posted by Inkoate at 12:43 PM on December 19, 2013 [3 favorites]


After being pressed by my friends who inexplicably loved it, and when I realized who was in it -- Bill Nighy, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant (kinda) -- I rented it from Blockbuster (remember those days, kids?). And hated it. HATED it. I turned it off after about 15 minutes. I just can't take this kind of movie. I'll stop the rant there but I could go on for the four days until Christmas.
posted by janey47 at 12:44 PM on December 19, 2013


Three days, now.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 1:02 PM on December 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


I don't really care about Love, Actually. I saw it once and hardly remember the plot.

But what is wrong with loving airports? I once read an essay somewhere that started on how women feel oppressed in airports and hate them and I thought wait, what? I'm a woman and I LOVE airports.

OK I don't like the TSA. But everything else about airports is great! They're exciting and full of people rushing off to different places. The food courts, the foreign exchange counters, the gift shops, those trams that go from terminal to terminal. Watching the bags come down the carousel. I love all of it.

I also love train stations. Except Penn Station.
posted by interplanetjanet at 1:28 PM on December 19, 2013 [4 favorites]


stalking stuffer

You won. I mean, that's the only reason people watch shitty movies like this, right?
posted by hellslinger at 1:29 PM on December 19, 2013


I laughed at this piece; it's a funny take down of the movie. But it does seem kind of strange that this decade old film is suddenly being put through this intense scrutiny throughout multiple media outlets as if it were some sort of grand, important piece of art on the level of a Shakespearean drama instead of a light, breezy, RomCom. What's next: "Let Me Explain to You All of the Plot Holes, Logical Inconsistencies and Glorified Violence in 'The Three Stooges'"?
posted by The Gooch at 1:44 PM on December 19, 2013 [4 favorites]


I don't know, I think it's interesting because I saw the movie and had a "WTF is up with this dude and his giant flashcards about how he loves his best friend's wife and also WTF Colin Firth and Why is Claudia Schiffer Suddenly Here" but everyone loooved the movie so much I felt like a weird outlier. Now I don't anymore so that's cathartic.
posted by sweetkid at 2:06 PM on December 19, 2013 [5 favorites]


I have to admit I'm totally going to give in and watch Love Actually over the next few days. There are some cute and/or poignant moments and I enjoy making fun of the rest of it.
posted by orange swan at 3:09 PM on December 19, 2013


I also love train stations. Except Penn Station.

Do not get me started. Once upon a time....

(For the record, I could only watch < ten minutes of the movie.)
posted by IndigoJones at 4:35 PM on December 19, 2013


Wow. That was interesting. As a side note, if you can ever make a movie that doesn't make Jezebel spew venomous straw mans please let me know how.
posted by Talez at 5:02 PM on December 19, 2013 [5 favorites]


Love Actually is one of those movies I always seem to catch at random times, like 34% in or 63% in. I think. I'm always confused as to what's going on and only end up watching for 5 minutes. One of these days I'll watch it from the start.
posted by zardoz at 5:54 PM on December 19, 2013


First of all, how are you not gonna answer the president of the United States when he asks you how your day's going, Natalie!?

Check your Americanist privilege, Lindy!
posted by barnacles at 9:08 PM on December 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


So, I really enjoy "Love, Actually." It's become a yearly tradition for me. And I acknowledge that it's problematic, but that's part of what I love about it. It's a mess, but that's the point. Because life is a mess. It's a confection that was meant as a post-9/11/01 "cheer up." Because whatever happens, love is the common thing. Sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes your love is not returned. Sometimes it is. Sometimes other factors get in the way. Sometimes longtime spouses may seem to stray. Sometimes you love someone not approved of by your friends. Sometimes you have to fight for it. And life is messy, life is screwed up. Life doesn't hand love to you easily. But it's ok. It's always ok - because there's still love. Because the things that make life messy are fleeting, and love is still there in the end.

And I'm OK with film criticism - I'm OK that some folks don't like this movie. That's totally fine. A lot of times, though, I feel like the "not liking" comes from a misconception of what the film is trying to be. Is all of it realistic? Hell no. Some of it is farce, some of it is drama, some comedy, some fairy tale, some silliness... It's a mess, yes. It's supposed to be. It was a message to a world still grieving 9/11 that "hey, we still love each other, so buck up!"

But while I can accept legit criticism, this Jezebel piece is not that. This is bullshit hateful "snark" - with "snark" in quotes there because this is too deliberately hateful to be true snark. This is just hate for hate's sake. You know what I want to do after reading this? I want to find the author and follow her around for a day or two, just spewing hate at everything she does for no reason except that I've decided to hate her. Does she go to Starbucks? No matter what she orders, it's reason to insult her just because. Her clothes? Yeah, I'll hate those too, just to hate them and show how terribly clever I can be in hating them. Get that, Lindy West at Jezebel? I'm just gonna hate you no matter what. Isn't that funny? Isn't that clever? Does that make me look smart and interesting? Does it make anyone's life better or more enriched?

Of course not. It just vomits more hate into the world and turns people away from something they might actually like, if they could freely choose to engage with the movie as it is.
posted by dnash at 9:44 PM on December 19, 2013 [8 favorites]


it needs about 50% fewer dudes and 100% more women,

Applies to most things.
posted by bongo_x at 11:16 PM on December 19, 2013


I have seen Love Actually bout twenty times since it came out, maybe three times when it first screened and then I owned the VCD and then the DVDs. I was the nerdy kid who opted to see The Last Emperor for my tenth birthday and was riveted while my very bored friends ran around the movie theatre, and then got banned from picking films at boarding school after I had convinced them that Branagh's Henry V was an action-romance.

It is entirely possible to love a very mediocre and not very well-done piece of art. I love this film because it is a series of light to bittersweet anecdotes cleverly interwoven with a great soundtrack that through repeated viewing has become a familiar comforting joy to anticipate each Christmas.

Now about my DVD of Hot Chick by the esteemed Mr Schneider, I really have no excuse....
posted by viggorlijah at 12:13 AM on December 20, 2013 [3 favorites]


I think it gets the attention because it's the only example of a movie made in the 21st century that has somewhat worked its way into the canon of significant Christmas films.

What, not even Elf? There was OUTCRY here when it was announced that it wouldn't be shown on terrestrial TV this Christmas.
posted by mippy at 3:29 AM on December 20, 2013 [1 favorite]


But while I can accept legit criticism, this Jezebel piece is not that.

Damn right it's not. This is enthusiasm. The art of the enthusiast is a valuable one which the Internet has resurrected considerably, and it goes in both positive and negative directions.

If you want criticism, shit, look around you a little! Do a Google search! A ton of Actual Criticism is posted to MetaFilter every day, there is more of it than there're ever been before, and even Roger Ebert said before dying that there are more and better film critics blogging anonymously than there ever were writing for the papers. In fact, he did a couple of link compilations where he mentioned all of them, so look that up if you want.

Enthusiasm is different. It's based on emotion at least as much as it's based on logic, if not more so. And it's great in the same way that, say, Impressionist (or even sometimes surrealist) paintings are — you're not getting an accurate rendition of a subject, you're getting a rendition that's skewed by style and subjectivity and emotion and the result is sometimes far more striking, far more satisfying, than a straightforward attempt at rendition would have been. And that's okay.

Look, I am about as anti-snark as people come on this site — search through my comments and I'm sure you'll find me specifically criticizing snark about like five times in the last two weeks, because it's been a bugbear for me recently. But this isn't snark. It's hatred-as-performance. It's somebody with a personal grudge against a thing returning to it specifically to bear witness to its (perceived) awfulness. It's personal dislike of a thing elevated to such heights that it no longer gets in the way of people who legitimately enjoy that thing, because it's so ridiculous that you couldn't possibly take its criticisms personally. The criticisms that it legitimately makes, like the argument that Love Actually is a movie about white men getting what they want, is offered in a more sober tone and with enough distinction from the pure haterade that you can take it or leave it as you'd like.

And the result has been this thread, where a bunch of people are simultaneously amused by the piece and not entirely agreeing with Lindy's cartoonish, exaggerated interpretation. Which is generally the reaction to Lindy West on the blue, though there's always a strain of reader who can't tolerate her approach to writing. This is her general style, though — elevating emotional response to a point where it becomes somewhat surreal. She does this even when she's writing about serious issues, and it adds levity to what would otherwise be some very somber and very exhausting arguments about how women are treated by culture. She's written at length about how even "good feminists" act totally shitty towards fat women, she debated that one comedian about whether or not rape jokes were funny (and did a wonderful job bearing the brunt of the Internet's hatred after the fact), and, yes, occasionally she talks about how bad a movie is, and usually she is a little bit less committed to objectivity and winning people over when she's doing that because her approach to movies is to be a normal human being, which is to say: have feels, vent feels, move on. I love criticism but not every writer has to be a critic.

The notion that Lindy only writes the way she does because she thinks it's clever, or makes her look "smart and interesting", is suspect, though I'm sure she finds herself funny on account of she's goddamned hilarious. She writes how she writes because she's a writer, one who's spent years developing her voice (and as far back as five years ago, she was writing brilliant articles like The Different Kinds of People That There Are: A Complete List, which is why she's now allowed to write for Jezebel and reach a much wider audience on a regular basis). She has found a mode of communicating with the world that she feels is honest, and to a lot of people it rings true. It's not like she's pretending to be anything but. Look at the title of the piece again:

I Rewatched Love Actually And Am Here To Ruin It All For You

What part of that made you think you were gonna get criticism? What part of that made you think you were gonna get something objective? What part of that did you read, as a Love Actually fan, and think: boy oh boy, this is gonna be something I can engage with on a reasonable level? This was explicitly a post for people who enjoy turns-of-phrase like "cockblocktopus" and hating on a dopey movie, which is just as valid as loving a dopey movie.*

I, on the other hand, have never seen Love Actually, and I never intend to, and I enjoyed this very much! It has very little to do with the film, and everything to do with Lindy West, who is a wonderful writer and whose reactions I enjoy very much. It's why I also loved her review of Sex and the City 2, which I likewise have not seen. Because this is not criticism. Did I mention that already?



* Seriously. Either response is completely fine. Just because you love something doesn't mean other people don't get to hate it. And I know, from personal experience, that other people loving something in bulk can be as hurtful and irritating as other people hating something in bulk, only it's even worse, because then you feel like a jackass for ruining other people's lovefest.)
posted by Rory Marinich at 3:30 AM on December 20, 2013 [9 favorites]


Speaking of enthusiasm!
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:59 AM on December 20, 2013


But this isn't snark. It's hatred-as-performance. It's somebody with a personal grudge against a thing returning to it specifically to bear witness to its (perceived) awfulness. It's personal dislike of a thing elevated to such heights that it no longer gets in the way of people who legitimately enjoy that thing, because it's so ridiculous that you couldn't possibly take its criticisms personally. The criticisms that it legitimately makes, like the argument that Love Actually is a movie about white men getting what they want, is offered in a more sober tone and with enough distinction from the pure haterade that you can take it or leave it as you'd like.

yup, yup and yup. I actually gave the article a second (and less distracted) read last night, and liked it way more than the first time. Laughed out loud once or twice. This is a writer well in tune with her loathing, aware that it's hyperbolic to the point of ridiculous, and so plays it for laughs. But like all great satire, it's deadly serious about what it's serious about, which is that Love Actually is at best a ridiculous collections of narratives, at worst a very creepy one. I tend to side with the latter.

If you happen to be someone who loves Love Actually, and who prefers to keep that sentiment unexamined, all power to you. I feel the same way about certain pop songs of my pre-adolescent childhood, but I don't get to have it both ways; I don't get to argue that they're anything but over sweet desserts that remind me of a time when the world was much warmer, ordered, reliable, nice.
posted by philip-random at 10:33 AM on December 20, 2013


I haven't read the article because the commentary here is saying it is written in a style I would not enjoy, unlike the prior thread, but I did smile at the NPR take.
posted by rewil at 3:20 PM on December 20, 2013 [1 favorite]


Colin Firth falls in "love" with Aurelia at first sight, establishing Love Actually's central moral lesson: The less a woman talks, the more lovable she is.

None of the women in this movie fucking talk. All of the men in this movie "win" a woman at the end.


Which is the other reason (apart from the rising stardom of Martin Freeman) that I enjoyed the scenes he shared with Joanna Page so much the last time around. They talk, and he's respectful of her, and in the end it's she who makes the move and declares she wants him, after he chickens out.

Plus, they're both adorable.
posted by Gelatin at 4:49 PM on December 20, 2013 [3 favorites]


I have been fascinated with the re-appraisal of Love Actually, and last night my teenage daughters watched it on Netflix because they heard it was a "good Christmas movie." The Jezebel rant was just that -- a rant, exaggerated here and there for comic effect, purposely one-sided and with enhanced anger where it was probably not strictly deserved. And damn funny. But I think the sequence is pretty simple: (a) movie comes out as fluffy holiday-themed romance from 4 Weddings/Notting Hill guy, people see it, like it or not, forget it, (b) years go by, (c) in the past 2-3 years, increasing prevalence of LA as an alternative holiday movie to watch alongside or instead of IAWL, Mo34, etc, (d) people re-watch it as more jaded 2013 adults or watch for the first time, (e) some are horrified by what the movie's plotlines suggest about the role of women. I made that journey from "eh, amusing and charming fluff" to "dear lord this is saying something pretty bad." My daughters were horrified. So I enjoyed the rant quite a bit. 2 minor points -- it annoys the hell out me that people on Jezebel complained about the use of the phrase "British 911" which is 50% funnier than saying "call 999," which should be obvious. Second, my daughters were immensely charmed by the Martin Freeman/Joanna Page romance -- and this seems consistent across ages and genders, making the sublimation of this section pretty annoying.
posted by Vcholerae at 8:56 PM on December 21, 2013 [2 favorites]


I, like peripathetic, unashamedly, unabashedly love Love, Actually, and all you haters can go spend your Christmas telling small children Santa doesn't exist and wrapping up small lumps of coal or whatever else it is you do to prove how coolant above it all you are while I enjoy my holiday season watching it over again.

It wouldn't be so bad if, as mentioned above by better posters than me, this hate-on for Love, Actually was actually on target, but it is so absurdly wrong-headed as to be deliberately misreading numerous plot points just to make a case against the movie. Maybe Lindy West is a good writer all things considered, but then again it is a lot easier to be funny if you have no problem bending the truth to suit your narrative.

To whit:

1. Hugh Jackman is not a stalker in this movie, not at all. He is incredibly attracted to his assistant, an actual thing that happens in real life, and being a decent sort KNOWS it is wrong for him to act on it as he is in a position of authority over her. So he ignores his feelings until the (delightfully icky) scene with Billy Bob Thornton, when despite all his previous best intentions, he is unable to surmount his (irrational and illogical) jealousy. This scene comes at the worst possible moment for Grant, when he can't take time to process his emotion, and results in him spontaneously changing national policy in one fell swoop out of personal distaste for the smarmy Thornton. But, to his credit, Grant realizes he cannot control his emotion well enough to just ignore the problem, and so asks--making it clear that it is NOT a punishment and she has done nothing wrong--to have his assistant transferred to another (equal!) position, because he can't very well transfer himself as he has been voted in as PM.

He only pursues his former assistant after receiving a holiday card from her letting him know she is equally attracted to him. To his credit, because he is NOT a stalker, he does not know exactly where she lives, just her neighborhood (which she told him herself) and so ends up knocking on doors up and down her street to find her and tell her he feels the same way.

2. Liam Neeson's character in Love, Actually is the absolute best stepfather a boy could have, ever. There is no argument which can stand agains this essential truthism.

3. The guy in love with his best friend's new wife acts perfectly respectably, giving his friend a lovely wedding and carefully avoiding the new wife because his feelings for her are inappropriate. He does not reveal his feelings to Keira Knightley willingly; she discovers them after coming to his apartment in person and uninvited, demanding to see his footage of the wedding and literally playing his DVR of the ceremony over his continued protestations. Once she knows how he feels (because his copy, painfully, dwells lingeringly and lovingly on her face), he does the Christmas notecard thing to explain why he needs to stay away from her for a while so he can work through his feelings, which is the opposite of stalkerish behavior.

4. The Englishman in America with all the coeds? yeah, that is the weakest, silliest subplot. I tend to think it is deliberately over-the-top, in a tongue-in-cheek "Miracle of Christmas!" way, but YMMV.

5. Bill Nighy is, as always, delightful.

6. The body doubles in the porn shoots who get friendly and then end up together are not really as developed as some of the other characters, which is a shame, but I like that they have a great relationship with an iffy, hard-to-explain beginning to it; not all couples have perfect "How I Knew He/She Was the ONE" origin stories.

7. The writer and his Portuguese housekeeper, Aurelia, warm my heart. Yes, he goes to find her, having learned Portuguese--but only after she has kissed him and given him reason to feel she might return his feelings. And, tellingly, she has also been learning English, obviously in the hope of his returning to the cabin to write again. So either they are both stalkers here, or neither one of them is.

8. Emma Thompson and Laura Linney are amazing, strong characters, two women whose love is bonded with family commitments in very messy ways. They strive to do what is best for their loved ones, while personally suffering, because sometimes love involves sacrifice. I am a huge Rickman fan, and was grumbling at the screen the first time I saw him being such a fool for this young, attractive woman in his office--but this, again, is a thing that happens in real life. The feel-good moment, for me, is that Hugh Jackman is unexpectedly, and actually unrelated lay there for his sister (normally the family caretaker) just when she needs him to be the most. And we do see Rickman and Thompson together later, and they are working this out, just as real couples frequently have to do in a committed relationship.

These two actresses alone render any criticism of the film including phrases like, "None of the women in this movie fucking talk. All of the men in this movie "win" a woman at the end," obvious as nothing more than the the Hatey McHaterson snark it is (even discounting the fact that several men in the movie end up without a woman, too).
posted by misha at 10:33 AM on December 24, 2013 [4 favorites]


I'm watching Love Actually right now, like every year. Can't jump on the hate bandwagon.
posted by SarahElizaP at 1:26 PM on December 24, 2013 [2 favorites]


MISHA NO you keep saying Hugh Jackman when you mean Hugh Grant and now I want the whole thing redone with Wolverine being incredibly surly the entire time.
posted by elizardbits at 1:36 PM on December 24, 2013 [5 favorites]


a general swap of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine with Hugh Grant as Hugh Grant (he only ever plays the one role) would immeasurably improve the past couple decades of cinema.
posted by philip-random at 1:38 PM on December 24, 2013


omg, About a Boy where Wolverine is Will and Peter Parker is Marcus
posted by elizardbits at 1:41 PM on December 24, 2013 [2 favorites]


LOL! Oh, I wish that was in purpose because Love, Actually would have been awesome with Jackman!

"Hey, Bub?!" *KCHING* *Claws out* *jumps on the desk with arms extended, fierce grimace in his face (also now shirtless for some reason), "You wanna let go of my assistant?"

But actually we have just recently watched the latest Wolverine with our youngest and I guess the wrong Hugh got stuck in my brain somehow. Heh.
posted by misha at 6:45 PM on December 24, 2013


Just finished Poutine Christmas with the missus, which means Love Actually and whatever Die Hard sequel is on deck (this year, 2, which is really not a strong entry in line).

While watching, a friend posted a link on Facebook to the Jezebel review, in response to my unashamed mention. It's not part of my canon of great films, but I watch it happily each year. I think Rory got it right in calling West's article "hatred-as-performance"--really, she just gets too much too obviously wrong to take it to heart. And Misha did a fine job of cataloging the positive sides of the storylines. It's a rom-com, it's light, it's fluffy, but to the extent that it has messages, they're relatively updated. In particular, unrequited-love guy gets to... deal with the fact that his love is unrequited. The more common rom-com plot would have had Keira Knightley run off with him after the flashcards, because he really, really, really loves her, while her poor husband only really loves her. Instead, he gets to accept that he'll never, ever, ever, get the girl, and welcome to the real world.

In all these Hate Actually articles I see, Emma Thompson seems to come under the most fire, and I suspect that's because she's the most formidable counterexample. She's not on call to the grieving friend, she's not powerless or blind, and when her partner cheats, she confronts him about it unhysterically, factually, in a way and at a moment that makes him deal with the confrontation--he can't lie, he can't squirm, he can't argue, he can't distract with an outburst, he can only accept that she knows and that he now has to deal with the consequences of his own actions, for which she's not responsible. They never paint her as faithless or shrill or frigid or giving him any excuse--it's entirely midlife boredom and weakness on his part. His secretary is offering herself. She's not seducing, she's not manipulating, she's just making it known that she's available--which puts all the responsibility for his infidelity on him. He's at fault, but Emma Thompson has to deal with the fallout, and the most poignant moment in the film is when she goes alone to the bedroom, and cries but doesn't crumble. And in the epilogue, he's the one who's been ejected for the moment, and is in the process of working his way back into the family. This isn't a crappy storyline at all. It's not deep, but it's pretty good overall.
posted by fatbird at 12:14 AM on December 25, 2013 [2 favorites]


« Older Cortylandia, Cortylandia ¡Vamos todos a...   |   2013: The Year 'the Stream' Crested Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments