Okay. This is my Christmas present to myself. I’ve been struggling with finding the time and energy to write, and so I’m going to make it as easy as possible: I’m going to wade into the debate about the movie Love Actually.

Ever since it came out in 2003, Love Actually has taken a lot of heat — and also a lot of praise. It has gained entry into the ranks of Christmas classics (sometimes with “cult” in the middle there, for extra alliteration credit), and it has gotten a number of takedowns. Here’s one:

Why Love Actually is not the heartwarming romcom you’re remembering

And this one is… really angry about this movie.

I Rewatched Love Actually and Am Here to Ruin It for All of You

On the other hand, this one does — well, what I’m about to do, but I’m going to be more effusive and less hesitant in my praise. Because I actually like this movie (I know, I missed a golden opportunity there — but I’m not going to lie, because I’m writing this on Christmas day, AND ON CHRISTMAS YOU TELL THE TRUTH — and I don’t love this movie, not all of it.), and this one treats it like an insane trainwreck — literally uses that phrase when talking about the worst plotline from the movie — which you can’t look away from. It’s also got some useful information about the filmmaker, if you’re curious.

‘Love Actually’ Turns 20: Revisiting Its Incredible, Awful Greatness

So to be clear, this is not my favorite Christmas movie. It is top five, but it’s definitely behind A Christmas Story and It’s a Wonderful Life, and probably behind The Family Man. If we’re counting Charlie Brown’s Christmas, Chuck Jones’s Grinch and the Rankin/Bass oeuvre, and if both Die Hard and Lethal Weapon are Christmas movies, then it isn’t even top ten.

But it’s a nice movie. It has a good message, and it presents that message in a genuinely interesting and honest way, which you almost never find in rom-coms or Christmas movies, and I respect the hell out of that. It is heartwarming, and sometimes heartbreaking, and it has Bill Nighy as one of the best characters of the last 25 years, something even the proudest Love Actually haters will admit (Not that Jezebel one, but that one’s really shouty). It’s got an incredible cast pretty much all the way through, which makes up for some of the absurdities and offenses that are almost inevitable in a rom-com, and definitely inevitable in a Christmas movie: and this is both.

I think, honestly, that’s the big problem people have with this movie: it is cheesy. It is cringey. It is unrealistic. It is cliche. But of course it is: it is a rom-com AND a Christmas movie. Rom-coms are supposed to make us believe that love is possible, and Christmas movies are supposed to make us believe that miracles are possible, AND that good things happen to good people. Love Actually is going to make those particular sins even more intense because it is a montage movie: it is a collection of nine vignettes about individual characters with individual stories, which means that no one story gets more than about ten to twenty minutes of screen time; that means there is not enough space in the film for actual development of actual characters with actual plotlines. That’s why I like The Family Man more: because it is a Christmas rom-com which tells only one story. So it does the same thing better. But Love Actually does something else, something nearly impossible.

Go ahead. Tell me a romantic story in fifteen minutes without relying on cliches.

While you’re at it, tell me ANY Christmas story that isn’t cringey. There are bad moments in Love Actually, but there’s nothing in it like this heap of crap:

(And this song was turned into a Christmas movie. With Rob Lowe. Get outta here with your Love Actually hate.)

Okay. Let me get into specifics. (Spoilers, of course, but I assume if you’re still reading, you’ve seen the movie, maybe several times.) I’m not going to respond directly to every one of the points raised in any particular argument, I’m going to run through the storylines, acknowledge the issues that exist, and give my opinion on each. Ready? I’m going to use Wikipedia’s article as my organizing principle because why not.

And I’m going to use this guy as my muse.

The movie begins in the airport, which the Jezebel review hates; I admit I’m not in love with the opening, because I too hate airports: but you know what? the best moment of any trip, ANY trip, I’ve ever taken on a plane, is when I get to come home and my wife comes to pick me up, and I get to meet her and see her for the first time in days. So I get where this movie is coming from. And I like the title drop, coming in the sentence, “Love actually is all around.” Remember that: that’s the message.

Then we get into the storylines. Starting with this:

Billy Mack And His Manager Joe

Billy’s the best part of the movie. Bill Nighy plays him perfectly, and the character provides a necessary puncturing of the saccharine Christmas motif that is otherwise pumping through the veins of this movie. The song he is remaking is awful (AND I JUST FOUND OUT IT IS A REAL SONG BY THE BAND WHO MADE “WILD THING” holy shit I always thought it was written as a joke for this movie) and his desire to re-release it for Christmas in order to revive his career and fame and bank account is such a perfect parody of everything that Hollywood and corporate “arts” makers in every field do as often as they possibly can, most often with things just like this movie, works using the themes of love and Christmas; so I love that Billy is upfront about it, and hates himself for doing it, and asks people to join him in his self-loathing abuse of his own career and art. This is exactly what this kind of shit deserves, and Billy goes for it, full speed ahead. And Bill Nighy’s degenerate’s laugh is pure art. The movie that starts with this story is not taking itself too seriously. Neither should we.

The end of this story, when Billy leaves Elton John’s debauchery-fest and goes back to hang out with his manager Joe (And may I just say, all of the attacks that take the movie to task for fat-shaming Natalie [A point against the movie, I agree wholeheartedly] NEVER mention Billy’s constant description of Joe as his “fat manager,” or when he calls Joe the “ugliest man on Earth.”), presents maybe the best iteration of the movie’s message: Billy calls Joe the love of his life. No, he does not mean it romantically. (Another sort-of reasonable knock against this movie is that it is entirely heteronormative; true, but so is EVERY OTHER ROM-COM IN THE HISTORY OF CINEMA THROUGH 2003) He means that love has different forms, and for him, his most stable, most reliable, most considerate friend is the love he needed most. Because that’s what love is: and that’s why it’s all around us.

Going on (though pausing to make Christmas dinner — ziti with roasted vegetables, YUM!!).

Juliet, Peter, and Mark

This story line gets the most undeserved shit from haters of the movie. Okay, sure, it is pretty gross and weird that Mark is in love with his best friend’s fiancée and then wife — except no, it’s freaking not. This happens. It sort of happens all the time. It is perfectly reasonable and honorable that Mark tries his best to hide his feelings, and it is even more reasonable that he is bad at doing so. This story maybe suffers the most from the format of the movie, because without time to show the long buildup of Mark’s affection for Juliet, it just comes off as unrequited and hidden, which is creepy (Except it’s NOT because he is trying not to move in on his friend’s love, and that’s why he never says anything about his feelings, but clearly if he separated himself from Juliet he would never get to see his friend Peter and so he tries to push away his feelings and he can’t — how is that wrong?? Is he wrong for feeling attracted to someone he can’t have? Then I have bad news for EVERYONE WHO LOOKS AT KEIRA KNIGHTLEY IN THIS MOVIE.), and then the movie makes the unfortunate but entirely understandable choice, given the actress and the medium, to focus on how absolutely lovely Juliet is as a way to show that Mark has feelings for her. Every time I watch this I don’t think, “Ermagerd dude umm stop looking at your best friend’s new wife?! Ewwww!” I think, “Jesus, it would be hard to be in this situation, to feel that way about these two people and never show it.” And then when he gets caught? And looks like a creep because he thought he was concealing it, and clearly was concealing it because neither person has a clue??

Now I grant you, the posterboard scene is cringey. And hard to believe, as well. But I’ll tell you what, as someone who has actually written notes to ask people on dates, and not when I was in middle school BUT WHEN I WAS IN COLLEGE, there are times when people are completely fucking cringey. And hard to believe. I agree with the critics that Christmas is not actually the time to tell the truth — but I do think truth is better than lies, and especially in important and close relationships, so I see Mark’s gesture as a good-hearted one. I do not see it as a play for Juliet, an attempt to win her away from Peter, and I do not see it as pushing feelings on her which he shouldn’t talk about; he tried not talking about his feelings, and it didn’t work because he got caught (because unlike actual stalkers and real creeps, he’s bad at concealing himself and his feelings), and now the secret is out. It’s already freaking awkward, and pretending that none of this happened is not going to make it less awkward; his only other option is to sever all ties with his friends. And I don’t see that as a better choice. I don’t like that Juliet kisses him: I think it’s a weird way to tell him that everything is okay; but I think of it as her telling him something kind, that in a different world he would be a fine choice. This way he doesn’t feel ashamed of his feelings, even though they are not returned and never will be, and it allows him to keep some of his shredded self-esteem. Because after she kisses him, see, she runs back to Peter: so she is gone from Mark, this will never come back, he will never kiss her again — but he’s not an absurd fool for feeling desire for her, as she could in theory return it. It’s weird, but it works. I love that he just turns and walks away and says intently to himself, “Enough. Enough now.” He has to stop this pining, and he knows it, and now that he has revealed his feelings to Juliet, and she has rejected him — kindly — he may be able to move on.

Sometimes that’s what love is: messy as hell. But it is both Mark’s and Juliet’s love for Peter that allows them to have this awkward, ugly situation between them, and to try to make it work anyway, for Peter’s sake. To me, that’s sweet. It’s not romantic, and despite the (pretty awful) attempts to make the posterboards funny, it’s not comedic, either. But you know what it is? It’s Christmas. It’s another kind of love.

Oh: and for those who complain about this situation being inappropriate because Keira Knightley was 17 when she made this movie? Allow me to explain what acting is. The character was not underage, so the story is not inappropriate. If the actress was underage, and the movie put her in the inappropriate position of being an object of desire for the audience, that was maybe a poor choice for the filmmakers, so feel free to blame them for doing so — but Ms. Knightley chose to take the part, knowing what the character was and why she was being picked for it.

Jamie and Aurélia

This is another one that suffers from the short screen time. Sure, the romance between these two is not based on communication, because they can’t speak to each other intelligibly. But first of all, Aurelia works in Jamie’s home, and he works at home, and so they spend all day together; there are things you learn about a person when you spend time with them, even if you don’t talk. Since the story is short, we don’t get to see the multiple adorable interactions between the writer and the house cleaner over the course of the weeks they spend together, but it is not any more reasonable to assume that there aren’t any such moments than it is to assume than it is reasonable for Aurelia to strip before she jumps into the pond, but for Jamie to go in fully clothed. I agree that scene is a bit exploitative: but also, it isn’t the worst in the movie, and to me, the most absurd part is not her taking off her clothes to jump into the water — it’s her moving the paperweight and letting the pages fly away to land in the water, not realizing, apparently, what would happen when she moved it. I mean, come on: have you never been around paper before??

Also, more to the point for the movie: exploitative or not, that scene (it’s not the only one) makes clear that this woman is lovely. And I hear that Colin Firth is generally seen as easy on the eyes. So sure, their romance might at first be based on being attracted to each other: but that’s not all it is — AND THAT’S NOT AN UNCOMMON THING. Allow me to introduce you to a certain play set in Verona: which also gets the same attacks, about the romance and therefore the marriage being shallow because it is based on mutual attraction: but people have to understand just how incredibly powerful attraction can be. And also, think about how lonely Jamie is, and maybe Aurelia too. So okay, maybe this marriage won’t be forever — but I can see it happening. This is sometimes how love actually works, even if it doesn’t work out. It’s still love.

I won’t accept any of the shit about Jamie not speaking Portuguese very well, at the end. or Aurelia’s family being ridiculous. He tried to learn the language in like a week: he does quite well. And if you think no family would be that absurd, well. You don’t have any in-laws.

NEXT!

John and Judy

Okay, two things: first I’m going to veer away from the Wikipedia article, and put the sillier storylines in here, and then end with the four big ones; and second, I admit that I don’t like either this storyline or the next one very much. This one bothers me because — well, because I’m kind of a prude. These two being naked around each other and talking about traffic makes me pretty uncomfortable. But of course, that’s the joke. And these two actors do it very well. Is the job they are portraying real? Of course not, there’s absolutely no reason why they wouldn’t have the actual porn actors stand in place and mime sex while they set up the lights and all; but this story wouldn’t be cute if they were actually making porn and talking about traffic, and slowly leading up to a first date.

Though that would make a pretty good romance…

Never mind. The heart of this story is two things: the perfect casual way they work around the awkwardness of their nudity and mimed sex acts, and the utterly sweet, innocent kiss that ends their first date, with Bilbo — sorry, Jack — cheering as he jumps down her steps. That is rom-com gold, and if you can’t see it because their job isn’t realistic, Jesus Christ, take it up with rom-coms.

Colin, Tony, and the American girls

This one is also a bad story line. Colin is annoying and stupid, and it’s bothersome that these women find him so very appealing, and absurd that they all dive into this orgy housemate scenario, and it’s certainly offensive that Colin brings back another hot girl as a gift for his other British friend at the end of the movie. I think this is the dumbest part of the movie, so I’m not going to try to defend it.

But I will say a couple of things. First of all, all great movies have bad parts, so the existence of this bad story is not enough to make Love Actually a bad movie; this is just the time when you go get another snack or head to the bathroom. Secondly, this whole thing is played tongue-in-cheek, totally absurd; take it that way, and the scene in the image above, where the three girls are cooing over how Colin says “bottle” and “straw” but are disappointed that he says “table” the same way they do, is hilarious. I think this can be seen as a pretty good parody of both the way some people melt over accents AND NOTHING ELSE, and also the way movies frequently throw attractive women at unattractive dudes and have the women act as though the idiot is God’s gift to their love lives or sex lives or both.

And I won’t point out that both of those things are sometimes true in real life.

This is a bad story line. In a good movie.

Sarah, Karl, and Michael

This is another story line I have a hard time watching, but not because I’m a prude (Though I am uncomfortable seeing that guy nearly naked, because DAMN does he make me feel like a raw potato): just because it’s so painful watching Sarah make this choice. But this is one of the best moments to examine and recognize what this movie is really trying to say about love.

First, love is all around us, and not always where we expect it. Sarah has been in love with Karl since she started working for this company (And that exchange, where Alan Rickman’s character Harry asks Sarah how long she has worked there, and how long she has been in love with Karl, and her answers reveal that she fell him fifteen minutes after she started working there, is absolutely brilliant, and a wonderful piece of acting by both Rickman and Laura Linney), and has never acted on it; she finds out that Karl has known all along, or at least for a while, and so do the rest of their coworkers; this means, in usual movie/TV dating scenarios, that she has failed to conceal her true feelings, has not played hard-to-get, and is therefore doomed, and will have no chance with that guy, ever. But no: Karl approaches her, he asks her to dance, he is enchanted by her, he goes back with her to her place, and none of it comes off as sleazy or exploitative (I mean, other than the gratuitous near-nudity of this Brazilian hunk, but we’re not concerned about the exploitation of male actors. [Really. We’re not.]), it’s just — romantic.

But then Sarah turns away from the hottie in her bed because she feels that she has to answer the phone call from her mentally ill brother. And Karl leaves.

It’s funny to me because the critics castigate Karl for that, for stepping out after Sarah rejects him twice, choosing to take the call instead of the sex; because I see that as Sarah’s mistake and bad behavior, not Karl’s. I think when she tells her brother during the second call that she is not busy, that she is ready to talk to him, while sexy Karl is sitting all naked-adjacent right next to her in the bed, that it is a clear message of how she feels for Karl right then, and I think it is respectful of him to accept her choice and leave, and also the right response when a mood has been killed that hard. No, I don’t think it should be on Karl to find a way to make the relationship work around Sarah’s commitment to her brother: she made a clear choice, he respects it. In the rom-com world, she would have to go to him, hat in hand, and apologize and make some grand gesture to win him back; in the real world, he’ll just go pick up somebody hot in a bar somewhere. Somebody who will turn off their goddamn phone in order to have sex with someone they have purportedly been in love with for years.

But though this story line hurts a bit to watch, I think it is essential for the movie: because this is actually love. She chooses self-sacrificial family love over personally satisfying romantic love, and Lord knows lots of people do that; and while it is to be pitied and denigrated in a romantic movie, there is nothing more Christmas than spending time with your family instead of the hot Brazilian man. Romantic love is not the only love. And sometimes the choices we make for love are not healthy for us — but that is not the fault of the love. Sarah’s commitment and dedication to her brother is laudable, even though it is also toxic for her; in a perfect world she would find a way to have both things, and many people do that. But many people don’t: and it’s still actually love. That’s what the movie is trying to say. Love is multi-faceted, wildly variant, and not always healthy or good. But it is love. It is strong. Stronger than sex.

And that’s pretty damn strong.

Harry, Karen, and Mia

But while love for Sarah is stronger than sex, sex, for Harry, is stronger than love. And this story line shows that. And it shows it pretty perfectly.

It is not clear to me why Mia wants to sleep with Harry. Maybe she finds him attractive — Alan Rickman was certainly not an ugly man, and not everyone finds age gaps unappealing (though in our modern world, with our fascination with and also our deep-seated aversion to pedophilia and sexual exploitation, we keep acting as though two adults who have disparate ages is as terrible, or even as icky, as an adult assaulting someone underage — and it is NOT) — and maybe she finds his position, his wealth, his power appealing; maybe she just wants to mess with him, and maybe she wants to be a homewrecker; any of them are possible, all of them are things that people do, even things that attractive young women do with older married men. But in the situation where the woman he works with wants to sleep with him, and is aggressive in trying to show it, Harry does what probably the majority of men would do: he considers it. He flirts with the idea, though he is also very clearly uncomfortable with it — when he calls her to say he’ll get her a Christmas present, and she tells him that she will give him all of herself, but if he’s going to buy her a present then she wants something pretty, he is neither smooth nor particularly sexy in his replies; he is fumbling and silly, like most married men would be when trying to flirt with someone they shouldn’t be flirting with.

But he does the wrong thing. And he breaks his wife’s heart, and ruins his own family, and Emma Thompson shows that so perfectly that even people who hate this movie love this segment, though they won’t admit they love it, because they hate Harry for what he does to Karen. But that kind of response shows that the movie is successful: the story works, the acting is wonderful, the audience’s response is exactly what it is supposed to be. I like this story for that reason, though of course I also get pissed at Harry and feel so sorry for Karen — her final shot at him, when she says he made a fool out of her, too, is just brilliant.

Let me also say that you cannot dislike both this story line and the Colin story line: they are polar opposites. That one is stupid; this one is smart. That one is a parody; this one is completely realistic. The Colin story is pure happiness, because Colin’s dreams come true; this one is pure sadness, because Karen and Harry’s lives are ruined, at least their romantic and family lives. You can’t criticize both in the same breath.

Okay. Next.

David and Natalie

This one is the rom-commiest story in the movie, and it’s everything that rom-com romances are: shallow, because the movie is never long enough to show a real buildup of a romance; unrealistic, because no prime minister looks like Hugh Grant and no housemaid looks like Martine McCutcheon; more than a bit offensive, usually because part of the idea of overwhelming romance is that it has to break through barriers, and barriers are often taboos, so rom-coms frequently break taboos — in this case, the posh, upper-class Prime Minister having an upstairs/downstairs relationship with the housemaid who’s from around the way; and if we feel like being humorless sourpusses, we can describe this as exploitative or derogatory to the person in the inferior position, in this case the woman.

Yeah yeah yeah.

The genuine criticisms of this are the fat-shaming of Natalie, who doesn’t deserve it, though of course no person ever does; and the rather horrifying scene where the American president, played all too well by Billy Bob Thornton, sexually harasses Natalie and David does nothing about it in the moment, but even worse doesn’t tell her not to when she later apologizes for the situation. And I agree: they make too much of her being fat, and she’s not, but the whole point of that is to show another “obstacle” that their love overcomes, namely that she is not as classically beautiful as someone might want her to be, but he loves her anyway. And sure, the actress doesn’t fit that, because she is in fact classically beautiful; but first, I guarantee you that despite all the scoffing from the critics, that actress has indeed been constantly fat-shamed throughout her acting career precisely because she is not built like, oh, say, Keira Knightley; and second, every goddamn movie with a story like this fails because of the actors being inhumanly attractive. You ever see My Fair Lady? Where the flower girl, Eliza, is at first “deeply unattractive,” until she gets to take a bath and put on pretty clothing — when it is revealed that said flower girl is actually Audrey Freaking Hepburn, one of the most beautiful human beings in all of history? Sure, a smudge of dirt on her cheek makes Audrey Hepburn unappealing. Of course it does. Just like when the nerdy girl takes off her glasses and turns out to be a stunning beauty.

I do think the sexual harassment scene is gross, and David does handle it badly. But again, rom-coms do this: the hero fails the maiden in her moment of need, and must then put on a Show of Love and Act of Contrition in order to prove to her that he actually loves her; and David goes through her neighborhood looking for her, door to door, singing “Good King Wenceslas” to three girls who ask him to carol, and then when he finds her, he goes with her to her little brothers’ Christmas pageant — featuring the above-pictured Nativity Octopus. That’s full on rom-com, in every way. And it’s cute, damn it. It’s rom-com cute. I saw a tweet that criticized David as Prime Minister for endangering England’s most important alliance for the sake of a harmless little sexual harassment, and — I mean, please just fuck off, at that point.

Daniel, Sam, Joanna, and Carol

I saved this one for last, because I think this is the heart of the Christmas movie, as the David/Natalie story is the heart of the rom-com. This story is my favorite. Though even here, there is a flaw, and it’s Claudia Schiffer showing up at the end to melt the heart of Liam Neeson; that’s a weird thing to do to a character that starts the movie speaking at his wife’s funeral — though not as weird as making that dead woman into the villain at her own funeral by having her insist on the Bay City Rollers as her farewell music, which would be pretty funny IF HER TEN-YEAR-OLD SON WEREN’T THERE. He is there, and that scene and that joke is fucked up, I agree. But this also is pretty classic rom-com concept, because it is Daniel’s love for his wife overriding his sense of propriety, but he does it and introduces the appalling music choice because that’s what the woman he loved wanted. Very British rom-com, really.

But other than Claudia Schiffer (which I also don’t like because it’s too meta that Daniel uses her as the jokey-joke representation of what it would take for him to move on after Sam’s mother, and then Claudia Schiffer BUT IT’S NOT CLAUDIA SCHIFFER IT IS CAROL PLAYED BY CLAUDIA SCHIFFER shows up to make googly eyes at him and even apparently go with him to the airport at the very end which is even weirder), I think this story is lovely. Sam is in love, and of course he’s not, he’s bloody ten years old; but ten-year-olds won’t accept that fact as Sam doesn’t: and the right thing to do is exactly what Daniel does, which is take him at his word, take him seriously, and try to help without actually making him feel stupid or uncomfortable. The reality is that this brief crush will pass away, as every ten-year-old’s crush does; and if in the moment Sam learns to play drums, there’s nothing on Earth wrong with that. It gives the boy something to focus on other than his dead mother, and that seems like a good thing to do. It treats love as a real thing, and Sam’s feelings as real things, and that is DEFINITELY a good thing to do. The critics say that Daniel should encourage Sam to talk to Joanna, like a grownup with a romantic attraction; that strikes me as pretty damn disingenuous as a criticism, and also very much a weird thing to tell a ten-year-old to do. That is absolutely what you should tell a teenager, or a grown person to do; but what is going to happen if this kid tells this other kid that he loves her? She’s going to laugh at him, roll her eyes, and then make fun of him with her friends. So Daniel doesn’t tell him to do that. He plays along, and encourages Sam, while also trying to keep him grounded.

It ends up with a chase through an airport and a kiss because it’s a Christmas movie. And in Christmas movies, miracles happen.

But what this story is really about is these two people, Sam and Daniel (Who is Sam’s stepfather, by the way) learning to be a family together. At the end, Sam calls him Dad, instead of Daniel, and when Sam gets his kiss from Joanna, he leaps into Daniel’s arms and gets a genuine hug: and it’s beautiful. That story line is done very well, and is incredibly sweet, and I love it. It also gives me a reason to enjoy “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” which I associate with my favorite part of this movie I enjoy; it makes Mariah Carey season a whole lot easier to take.

So that’s it. It is not a perfect movie: I don’t really like that it is both a rom-com and a Christmas movie, because that does some weird things to the story lines — the romance between Sam and Joanna is WAY too romantic because it’s in a rom-com, where in a Christmas movie it would just be innocent and sweet, as it should be — but I think it is a decent version of both things individually, with all the inherent flaws of those two genres; and I think all on its own, it is an entirely unique movie. One that is worth watching. Every year, if you really like it.

If for nothing else, then it is worth watching for Rowan Atkinson. The funniest part of the entire movie, hands down.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go watch The Family Man. Merry Christmas, everyone. And good night.