The Great “Love Actually” Debate

Early in Love Actually, dilapidated rocker Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) struggles to record a holiday-themed version of the Troggs’ “Love Is All Around.” “This is shit, isn’t it?” he sighs to his manager, Joe (Gregor Fisher). “Yep!” Joe replies cheerily. “Solid gold shit, maestro!”

A more rapturous reception greeted Love Actually when it was released during the holiday season in 2003. With an ensemble of brilliant Britons (including Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Liam Neeson, Keira Knightley, Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson) as charmingly lovelorn bumblers, the film was swiftly minted as a Christmas classic, despite dismal reviews.

Yet over the past two decades, Love Actually has crashed into a wall of evolving cultural norms. Today, it’s common for the story’s detractors to mention its arguably sexist tropes, scenes of body shaming, and general aura of ickiness (which is best embodied by the iconic scene in which Andrew Lincoln’s character creepily woos his best friend’s wife, played by Knightley, with a sign that reads “To me, you are perfect”).

Nevertheless, Love Actually remains beloved by many—and none of the discourse has resolved the question of whether it is offensive or just honest about the messiness of modern romance. In the hopes of finding some intellectual clarity, WW’s film critics joined forces for a debate, which has been edited and condensed from multiple conversations.

Together, we sought not only to analyze the blind spots of writer-director Richard Curtis, but to better understand why, after 19 years, Love Actually is still all around. —Bennett Campbell Ferguson, Assistant Arts & Culture Editor

Bennett Campbell Ferguson: All of you either recently rewatched Love Actually or watched it for the first time. How did it strike you?

Ray Gill Jr.: Looking at it now, I can kind of see what the appeal is. But also, I think it’s really funny to watch with today’s eyes how problematic so many of the scenarios are, like the workplace romance between Hugh Grant, playing the prime minister, and Martine McCutcheon, playing his assistant.

The whole movie is so full of lunacy that you let go of all those normal criticisms, because it’s like candy. I kind of equated it to being like a Christmas tree when I was thinking about it. It’s completely impractical, it’s got all these little pieces on it that kind of make you smile but make no sense. You pull it out once a year, enjoy it, and dispose of it.

Alex Barr: Something I noticed as I was watching it that I thought was really interesting and different than a lot of rom-coms of the early aughts is that there was not a specific decision or really an inkling to try to abridge those awkward moments that always happen when you realize, “Oh my God, I like someone.”

Even when you’re the prime minister of England or Hugh Grant, you go into those situations and there’s so much awkwardness. But so many rom-coms truncate that. They don’t really show the awkward parts where someone shuts the door and you’re just cringing at what you said. But that was so prevalent throughout Love Actually.

Chance Solem-Pfeifer: It is a psychotic movie. Hugh Grant himself just called the script psychotic in Diane Sawyer’s ABC special The Laughter & Secrets of Love Actually: 20 Years Later. It’s preposterous, it’s sweaty. It just has so many things that do not work—and so many things that I think are really lovely and kind of transcendent. Like, how is this working so well?

Ferguson: Even people who hate the movie seem to love the scene where Emma Thompson’s character realizes that her husband (Alan Rickman) has been unfaithful to her. Why?

Gill: Each one of the stories is about seeing a girl and thinking she’s beautiful and being a bumbling fool to get her, not falling in love. I don’t think they got to know any of these people. They kind of just use the women in this—except for Emma Thompson. You can’t give her a role and have her not freaking be present.

Solem-Pfeifer: That story is almost shockingly realistic, compared to the other things going on around it. Thompson goes in the bedroom and cries but then, a millisecond later, is straightening the bed. And she comes back out, and here’s the man who is now an unwitting sort of tormentor—just kind of plopped on the couch like a third kid between the kids.

How many moms over the holidays have had a terrible burden placed upon them and had a moment where it’s like, “Why is my husband not supporting me?” I don’t want to say it’s a universal experience, but it’s happened to a lot of mothers.

Ferguson: What are your favorite and least favorite storylines in the movie?

Barr: I definitely like the relationship with the young boy (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) and his stepfather (Neeson). He’s trying to walk him through what is it like to have your first crush and be in love for this first time? It was compelling to see the father-son dynamic play out with a mother who can’t be there. To me, it was one of the most genuine stories, to see that parental relationship while you’re navigating grief and loss, but you’re still in love and want to live your own life.

I think the one I didn’t love was the Hugh Grant storyline. But I also think that it speaks to reality, because those things do happen. We just don’t like to talk about it in movies. There are lots of debates and lots of ideological questions about should you represent reality in movies? Or should you represent reality as you think it should be? But this is Love Actually. It’s love as it really is.

SEE IT: Love Actually, rated R, streams on Peacock.