Do you hear those sleigh bells ringing? Just kidding, it’s your doorbell, and Rick Grimes is here to inappropriately express his love to your wife.
Yes, it’s that time of year again, when we watch the movie you always put on in front of your kids or parents because you remember it being pretty safe, but you forgot all the scenes where naked Bilbo Baggins simulates sex with an equally nude blond girl.
It is time for us all to watch Love, Actually.
This year, just like last year, there will be two chances to join in the fun. I did three slots one year to cover as many time zones as possible, but I was up for like twenty-four hours straight. If anyone from another time zone wants to set up their own watch along, put it in the comments!
So, grab some popcorn and tweet to #BillyMack as we revel in our annual holiday tradition of watching the movie I once described as “a warm, snuggly blanket for my internalized misogyny.”
Friday, December 18, 4 p.m. EST (UTC -5)
Friday, December 18, 8 p.m. EST (UTC -5)
In my opinion the best love story in the whole movie got cut. I still can’t watch the bonus features without crying.
Which love story was that?
The one between the school headmistress and her partner. It’s heartbreaking and beautiful.
OH MY GOD I NEED TO KNOW.
I’ve only watched on TV/Netflix (over and over and over) and never actually owned it….
Yay!
Um, isn’t this the same day that the New Star wars comes out?
Yup! It’ll be a nice night for people who don’t have tickets/don’t want to deal with the crowds.
The scene where Rowan Atkinson wraps the gift is one of my favorite scenes in any movie ever. I don’t know why – maybe it’s the obliviousness to Alan Rickman’s antsiness, or the fact that when you’re quickly trying to do something wrong the universe has a way of slowing things down.
Laura Linney’s storyline always gives me such a feeling of dread.
Actually, Rowan’s character was taking his time on purpose. I read somewhere that the director intended Rowan to be like a guardian angel type. LIke when he helped the kid get through airport security.
What he was doing was stalling to make Alan Rickman’s character reconsider getting the necklace at all or at least considering getting it for his wife. Unfortunately, Alan Rickman sucked and went out again and got it anyway. But Rowan tried, dammit!
I’ll try for 8pm, woooooo!!!!
Would you ever consider a post on why it’s your blanket of internalized misogyny? I remember you said something about it in the Grey recap and I’m super curious.
Because I know it’s horrible and misogynistic, but I love it anyway because it appeals to everything that I’ve internalized from movies for years and years.
Just rewatched this and… yeah, so many problems with it. The Colin Firth story is the worst.
A thought: It’s been commented before that the American girls Colin meets have dialogue and acting (not the actors themselves, but the way their characters are acting) that really seems standard for a porn film. Did Richard Curtis use this to signal what Colin’s “research” for Americans was, or is there something else going on here? (Like, careless slut-shaming or sexism ahoy!)
I think it really was Colin somehow stumbling onto exactly the situation he expected to have happen, but honestly the first time I saw the movie I thought they were going to rob him or steal his organs or something.
Pretty sure I’m repeating a comment from a whole year ago, but this is the most misogynist @6%4* ever to grace a cinema. I hate what haappened to Laura Linney’s character. Horrible, horrible disgusting, childish, emotionally blind film. Richard Curtis – %^£*& YOU!
This movie really is not good. Extremely misogynist, for starters, but also just a plain stupid film. I don’t find anything enjoyable about it, so I’ll pass on the watch-along.
I’ve never had any desire to watch the film, and, uh… after these comments, I think that was a good idea.
I’ll stick to Star Wars (which may very well be bad; we have been burned three times after all).
Have fun. 🙂
I don’t get why people are saying Laura Linney’s storyline is so bad? I mean yeah, it’s bad in a really heartbreaking sort of way, but jesus people sometimes that’s life. I appreciate movies where not everyone gets a happy ending.
Holy shit that’s Rick Grimes. HOLY SHIT. Also he’s a terrible person in that movie. (another OMG moment I just realized: OMG that Wisconsin hottie is January Jones.)
The Colin Firth storyline is pretty dumb and definitely not my favorite of the movie. I really love Liam Neeson’s story with his stepson, who I think is just the cutest little kid of all time.
I love this movie. I absolutely love it. It’s about all different kinds of love (romantic, parental, sibling, sexual, friendship) and it just does everything right for me. It’s got its problems but I’m so into it.
Crap, I was going to go back to edit but I forgot before hitting “post”:
Totally didn’t mean to insult people who have a negative reaction to LL’s story. It’s a really tough one to get through for sure.
As a person who was in a long term relationship with someone who is mentally ill, I found LL’s plot-line sad and very realistic. However, she didn’t need to keep answering the phone every time her brother called. As Carl pointed out, it wasn’t going to make her brother better. It might have actually made her brother realize that his sister does have a life of her own and he needs to respect that. But she kept telling him that she wasn’t busy – even when she had the guy she’d been crushing on for almost 3 years naked on her bed! I mean, it’s noble to be self-sacrificing but that’s ridiculous.
I would like to hear what others say, but I dislike it a lot because of fucking Carl. And also because of Laura’s inability to set her own boundaries, but that’s so accurate to real life that I can’t dislike her story for that reason.
If I may though, Laura needs to get her shit together. Her brother is surrounded by doctors and nurses 24/7, so I’m not sure what she’s so afraid of if she ignores his 2AM phone call. Not to mention, she shouldn’t answer his calls anyway. She can feel guilty or responsible or whatever without also playing into his delusions and paranoia. Really, that brother needs some space from her codependency issues.
Anyway, there’s no way Carl could figure all of that out without also watching the movie, so it looks like Carl primarily wants to hit it and quit it, but dude – you guys work together. As soon as Laura is like “blah-blah-blah my mouth is also used for speaking the feelings that I have,” Carl confirms they are not going to have sex in the next 60 minutes and leaves. But he leaves one thing behind: the burden of their unrequited love being all her fucking fault, when it absolutely is not. The misogynistic Love Actually universe treats it like a very black and white a choice between her brother and Carl. Since she’s a good, loyal woman she chooses her brother, but it’s so tragic boohoo. It’s an infuriating false dilemma that could’ve totally been avoided, but this is Love Actually and Carl is a penis attached to a cardboard cutout of Lenscrafters model. He doesn’t even bother trying to date her, because he is incapable of relating to anyone beyond their utility as a dick hole. So it’s totally his fault. Fuck you, Carl.
I feel like they may have cut something important from that story line, too, because it’s completely unresolved at the end. Laura Linney isn’t at the airport, that I remember.
I’m not going to blame Carl. If you go on a first date, and the person you’re with can’t manage to prioritize you for one evening (or one hour) over the issues in their life that are the standard everyday issues they have, then walking away seems like the sensible thing to do. Her fantasy crush does not impose any moral obligation on him to roll up his sleeves and make a relationship work where she’s already shown him she has other priorities. Unlike houses and cars, it’s always a terrible idea to take on another person as a fixer-up project.
Actually, I think that’s one thing that Love Actually is pretty even handed about. There’s no demand that Keira Knightley’s character must throw herself into helping creepy stalker best man deal with his feelings, and Carl doesn’t have to come up with a magic fix for Laura’s life. In both cases, people have to deal with their own stuff, and being an object of affection doesn’t carry with it any automatic obligation.
“Her brother is surrounded by doctors and nurses 24/7, so I’m not sure what she’s so afraid of if she ignores his 2AM phone call.”
See, that’s what bothers *me* about that plot line: what is the hospital staff even *doing* that they are letting patients disrupt their relatives’ lives at all hours of the day???
Exactly. When my ex was in hospital (he’s got Schizo-Affective Disorder) he wasn’t allowed visitors for the first couple of weeks and any phone calls after that were screened in a bid to keep his moods in check while his medication took affect. Even if Sarah’s brother was a long term patient things like phone calls would be strictly monitored.
I 100% agree. Carl had… what? Two, almost three years to get it together and ask her out for a drink but he didn’t. I gather from his comment at the Christmas party that it was a last chance thing – maybe he was leaving the company or something, I’m not sure of the backstory. But Jesus Christ, dude, are you the slowest man that ever lived, or what?! My ex was slow to take a hint but even he made a move after three months!! Carl obviously didn’t see Sarah as the type of woman he’d have a relationship with – just a one night stand/pity fuck cos she’s been drooling over him for the past two years, three months; whatever. I can understand how he’d get annoyed when she kept telling her brother that she wasn’t busy when clearly she had major shit going on, though. Way to deflate a man’s ego, Sarah!
Yeah, and in this movie, none of the older women get a happy ending. Emma Thompson’s character, nope. She gets to be cheated on. Laura Linney’s character? Nope. She gets to be alone caring for her brother. But Liam Neeson? He meets Claudia Schiffer! Colin Firth? He gets the young, attractive girl.
And I’m sorry, but that stupid Denise Richards plot line should have been cut in a movie that already had too many plot lines.
God, this movie is SO DUMB. And to top it all off, serve everything with a heaping side of fat-shaming. But it’s supposed to be so BRITISH AND FUNNY. Whatever.
What was the Denise Richards plot line? Don’t recall that one. And I hate the way that everyone bar Hugh Grant’s character keeps referring to Natalie as fat. Jesus, even her father calls her Chubby!