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

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.

the Linney story is good but why does that guy just lose interest in her because she has a mentally ill brother? what a putz

istr that its explicitly a porn set tho

4 of the 9 plotlines are about rich men pursuing employees

Colin Firth / Hugh Grant / Alan Rickman / who am I missing? Is Laura Linney working for or with her crush? It's been a while since I saw it.

I think we're supposed to think Linney's crush is a putz, that he froze her out because she had to take the call when they were about to have sex. Either because of injury to his sexual magnetism, or because he realised that he'd be sharing her affections - either way, not great.

Notting Hill is not good (says a former bookseller in Notting Hill Gate)

to me it seemed more like it just kind of killed the vibe (she was like crying and stuff) so he bounced. he could have been more supportive but they don't actually seem to know each other that well. it's putzy but not douchey imo.

the body double plotline isn't bad but it's very slight, it's one kind-of-joke stretched out over 10 minutes. also it doesn't seem like a porn movie, would a porn studio hire extra people to stand in for lighting tests?

xxp i was technically including Bill Nighy and his manager - which is obviously played for a laugh, but at the same time, i cant ignore the fact that it does in fact end with bill nighy arriving at his employees house, calling him the love of his life, and watching porn. (also crazy sexual tension in that last scene, i was sure they were gonna kiss)

re:the body double movie, its very confusing because the sex scenes seem to be bordering on x-rated and take place in many different rooms across many weeks of filming, but with what appears to be a major budget and large professional crew.

a decent porn movie?

that's the worst kind of porn movie

Wikipedia sez: "John and Judy are professional stand-ins for films. They meet doing the sex scenes for a film for which Tony is a production assistant."

The way that all of the stories are interconnected is the worst mid-level worst, just make a compilation film u coward.

blame martin mcdonagh for that

"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.”

These are ten stories of people set about nine months before they all found themselves as passengers on those fateful planes. You might as well say that that it was their... Last Christmas.

(Too dark?)

This is terrible, this script.

Just meaning to say that I also find this 9/11 bit quite inappropriate and stupid. Obviously people would rather call their loved ones than the people they hate when they know they're about to die.
I haven't seen this movie apart from the first ten minutes in German overdub, multiple times every Christmas I spent with my in-laws in Germany, as it's always on TV then. Never felt tempted to watch on.

I mean the quoted dialogue is terrible.

"can we imagine that many of the passengers on that fateful flight might have regretted, in the end, not driving home for christmas?"

look i know it was in november but

I've been thinking about this and any way you slice it, being in a plane about to hit the twin towers and deciding to call your arch enemy to really let them have it is a baller move.

"You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore!"

lol