Favorite Plotline in the film [i]Love Actually[/i]

voted genocide narrowly over dogshit

voted genocide narrowly over dogshit

― oh, amazonaws (wins), Friday, June 24, 2016 8:53 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

somebody explained the plot of this movie to me a couple of years ago and i just didn't believe them.

watched this for the first time this weekend and wife and i were absolutely floored by the opening monologue, cant believe nobody prepared us for:

"When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge – they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling love, actually … is all around.”

it was a long time ago and i dont want to nitpick but i would say that when it comes to the idea that love is all around us, the planes being flown into the twin towers is maybe a... flawed example?

CUT STRAIGHT TO Bill Nighy doing a wacky comedy version of "love is all around", playing it broad & silly enough for the folks alllll the way in the back row... truly could not believe that these were the real decisions the filmmakers made

Submitting the names of every person itt who repped for the Firth storyline to Portugal's national enemies list.

I feel it in my towers, I feel it in my planes

"When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge – they were all messages of love abject terror

they were all shitposts

The scene with the posterboard guy needs to be widely recognized as Lovebombing, Actually. I would love to read an oral history of who wrote that, what the fuck they were thinking, and what their purported rationale was for having her kiss him. I repeat myself here, but what kind of psycho harbors feelings until their best friend's wedding night, when he executes an elaborate plan to reveal his feelings about the woman his bff just married, directly to her. With posterboards he obviously crafted beforehand in planning this bombardment. And then she kisses him?!?!? Jesus.

it's a sick, sick film

posterboard guy only slightly more toxic & disturbing than the Liam Neeson's kid plotline imo: if you desire a girl from afar, avoid her and spend all your free time alone practicing a random skill. once you achieve mastery, the girl will be so impressed that she will love you. and it works!

i know i'm 20 years late but i cant emphasize enough our whiplash at expecting this to just be an innocuous bit of fluff and instead it almost felt closer to "the room", a constant state of shock and disbelief that every decision, right the opening moments, could be so bizarre and wrongheaded. idk if i've ever seen anything quite like it.

Also, the fact that her husband is black and the film is all, wow look at how right this creep is for her if only she could see and it’s not subtle

I see max pointed this out thirteen years ago, good lad

i kept waiting for some kind of twist in the plotline of the guy who goes to America and gets swarmed by submissive nymphomaniacs but no, thats just what happens... he even brings a sex slave back to England for his friend!

I would love to read an oral history of who wrote that

Emma Freud is often credited as “script editor” on Curtis’ projects, including this, but I don’t think he uses any other uncredited co-writers.

it was a long time ago and i dont want to nitpick but i would say that when it comes to the idea that love is all around us, the planes being flown into the twin towers is maybe a... flawed example?

This is my drunken Christmas party soapbox.

it was fist clenchingly awful when this was in cinemas and its so bizarrely dated now.

it feels like the Curtis wrote the opening scene of people reuniting in airports but late 2002 was still where GeneralPublic+(Emotions/Planetravel)=Sept11 and this was crowbarred in.

The tonal shift into comedic wet-wet-wet cover immediately afterwards makes more sense with a different voiceover.

I've never seen this movie by the way, I constantly hear people fulminate about it and I just like to think of it as something people made up to be mad at

The first time I (English) saw this film was in the flat of my then-girlfriend (American) with her (English) flatmates, and have to report that the "I'm going to America to score some skanks" storyline did not go down at all well.

I've never seen this movie by the way, I constantly hear people fulminate about it and I just like to think of it as something people made up to be mad at

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 26 December 2023 20:51 (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Think I have seen seven Richard Curtis films, they are all very bad, but this one is easily the worst because he just packs more in there, value for money if you want something to be annoyed about.

We tried to watch this movie a couple of weeks ago and turned it off about 25 minutes into it because we were absolutely horrified by how terrible it was

its as bad as many romantic comedies but agreed packing in so many of the worst possible parts and none of the insulation is the key

to be honest I would say that some of his recent films like About Time and Yesterday actually annoy me more because he always has (well, buys) a potentially good idea and completely ruins it by being constitutionally unable to imagine the lives of anyone except dim posh people in Southeast England who have lots of money and no real problems.

except that yesterday is the worst idea anyone has ever had tho

Bizarre to me there's a general vibe of "oh of course it's not a perfect film if you look at it from a 2023 POV but we liked it at the time"

It was so fucking shit at the time that my husband watched it on DVD after moving in to a new place on his own near a video rental shop, then immediately phoned me up in horror to rant about how offensively bad it was.

re Yesterday, there's a throwaway line from Richard Curtis's actually very good 1991 movie Bernard and the Genie about memorising some Barry White songs before returning to 2000 years ago. To score some skanks, essentially.

i know i'm 20 years late but i cant emphasize enough our whiplash at expecting this to just be an innocuous bit of fluff and instead it almost felt closer to "the room", a constant state of shock and disbelief that every decision, right the opening moments, could be so bizarre and wrongheaded. idk if i've ever seen anything quite like it.

there's a germ of sth interesting in Yesterday as in the original un-Curtis script the central character has only a small-to-moderate amount of success and just about makes a living with his Beatles songs, of course this was the first thing RC had to get rid of

With his long-time manager Joe, rock and roll legend Billy Mack records a Christmas version of the Troggs' 1967 song "Love Is All Around", titling it "Christmas Is All Around". Although believing the record is terrible, Mack promotes the release in the hope it will become the Christmas number one single, which it does. He foregoes a victory party hosted by Elton John to celebrate Christmas with Joe, getting drunk and watching porn.

#heartwarming

When you really read the plot it's just one storyline after another full of stalkers and creeps.

much better idea for Yesterday

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkqXyTwFt6g

Bizarre to me there's a general vibe of "oh of course it's not a perfect film if you look at it from a 2023 POV but we liked it at the time"

It was so fucking shit at the time that my husband watched it on DVD after moving in to a new place on his own near a video rental shop, then immediately phoned me up in horror to rant about how offensively bad it was.

actually very good 1991 movie

Haven’t we all enjoyed the impact of the 2023 remake with Melissa McCarthy in the Lenny Henry role this Christmas

I refuse to acknowledge its existence.
Anyway I see I have ranted about Love, Actually on at least one of the two other threads on it so maybe that's enough for Boxing Day!

I have never seen this film, now I almost feel that I have to.

I hadn’t watched it til maybe 5 or so years ago bc I was wondering why ppl enjoyed it so much.
This Xmas I watched Cat Person, which I felt was both more true to life and campier than LA by a wide margin. Not a Xmas movie tho.

Not in the general holiday spirit, no.

this movie was an airlines ad

rewatched this in full for the first time since it came out (had only seen parts of it) and like everyone else couldn't believe how bad a few of these story lines are. Also, and somehow I'd missed this, but Walking Dead guy lovebombs (an apparently 18 year old) Keira Knightly and yet, when the movie ends, there she is with her husband and him? There's really no resolution to that at all.

Best story is Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman. I am a Hugh Grant fan and so I like his british-public-wish-fulfilment storyline. It does show you how far we've advanced in 20 years where no one in their right mind will look at Eastenders woman now and think of her as chubby.

oh right and bill nighy....dumb storyline but also the most genuinely touching one.

Plumpy xp

I am a Hugh Grant fan and so I like his british-public-wish-fulfilment storyline.

Yeah, see, at the time it was def a fun "stick it to Bush and Blair" moment but now I listen to his little speech about being a small island that brought the world Shakespeare and all I hear is "UKIP UKIP UKIP".

I'd say that "The boat that rocked" was worse as it had a decent movie about Pirate Radio and smothered it in uck. The deleted scenes were mostly really good (the bit where they go down to Abbey Road studios at night and stare in wonder was genuinely touching, but had no context to fit it into the movie)...

Anyway, the only reason it isn't is that it's reach is only the sixties, not the entirety of "Love".

Still, both films are like Eric Idle going "Worr, ay?"

I had to watch this again this Christmas.

My family unironically love it.

I have to stare at this object over and over again.

Neeson plot is nearly interesting - it's sort of written as the stepfather/stepson pair attempting to manage grief by participating in romantic fictions (the tell being the crush-object having the same name as the dead mother), but it gives into the fiction and becomes slop. Also where is the boy's father? Are we inferring another death in his life?

I feel offended by the film's hatred of sex - the 2 most marginal plots (Freeman naked, Marshall's sex slaves) seem to treat it as a joke that is orthogonal to love. And of course the Rickman/Thompson/Makatsch plot treats it as destructive - Makatsch left only with a necklace (but seemingly not unhappy in her final scene), materially improved but excluded from the emotional economy of the film.

Grant, yes, that speech is 100% the Brexit sensibility and the whole slightly bumbling public schoolboy attitude flatters the part of the English nation psyche that chooses Johnson.

Lincoln/KK/Chiwetel gtfo, everyone otm.

I hate this film and want to be cynical about everything but Linney is brilliant and makes her plot work. Even her little scenes with Rickman move lightly.

i recently watched this again for the first time since it first came out. it is an insane/bad movie, but there are some good performances in it. neeson, thompson, rickman, linney, even andrew lincoln are all great, and i'm a sucker for grant's shtick so he works for me too (though i could not watch him dance). the actress who plays the portuguese maid is also good, though her more low-key/naturalistic performance doesn't fit in with what everyone else is doing.

it is crazy to me that the body double plot got the second-most votes in this poll, but otoh i can't really think of which plot i would pick. they are all pretty objectionable in different ways. i guess i would pick the linney plotline though i have no memory of how/if it resolves - it's the most unique plotline, feels the most grounded in reality, and no one acts like a douche in it.

I think I was reading a Julie Burchill(!) review of 4 Weddings when I decided it sounded fucking awful + I was never going to watch this shit, or any of his fucking movies for that matter. iirc Burchill wrote something about how the posh swearing in 4 weddings is hilarious. Blackadder 2 is as far as I got with this screenwriter and it doesn't look like I'm missing anything. But it has been fun reading how uniquely bad this one is. I almost feel like watching it now.

four weddings is

ok

i mean it has charms in the moments imo

And I'd forgotten the 9/11 line till I watched it this time - it is wild! Partly because it feels like such a work of the soft 90s.
My response was 'wow it would be cool to phone your enemy at the point of death and tell them you will carry your hatred into the next life'

the bb-tagging in this thread title is like an itch that's gone unscratched for a millenia

Lincoln/KK/Chiwetel gtfo, everyone otm.

Was kind of in a pain void by the final airport scene but felt there was a vague chance they were a throuple and pretending they weren't, which is an almost ok end to the plotline (only if Lincoln/Chiwetel also fucking)

it is crazy to me that the body double plot got the second-most votes in this poll,

honestly i would probably vote for the body double plotline, since it struck me as maybe the most healthy and normal plot. like, aside from working on a porn(?) film, they are just two normal-seeming people who meet, hit it off, go on a date, and thats all there is to it, without any deception, inscrutable choices or frightening sociopathic behavior.

i'm sure this has been done to death, but one of the weirdest things for me was how 4 of the 9 plotlines are about rich men pursuing employees. one plotline would be like "lol how tone deaf, it sure was a different time", but almost half the stories are about this! but bizarrely, the movie does not seem to feel like it is "about" this in any way, its just depicted as a very normal and common way for men & women to find romance. the only one thats not consummated by the end is alan rickman, and thats just because he's married, not because of any taboo about sleeping with employees. its stuff like that which makes this cross the line from just "bad romantic comedy" to "i cant believe what i'm watching".

aside from working on a porn(?) film

the sets are awfully nice for a porn film so I think it's a non-porn with lots of sex scenes....also, how long were they working on that film? The whole thing takes place over the course of several weeks. Timewise it makes zero sense.

Blackadder 2 is as far as I got with this screenwriter and it doesn't look like I'm missing anything.

Notting Hill was good but yes, otherwise you aren't missing anything, Blackadder is his supreme achievement.