'Love Actually' Is Unhinged, Actually — 6 Awful Things You May Have Overlooked In This Christmas Favorite
It may be a Christmas tradition, but it's time we admit it: 'Love Actually' is deranged.
Universal Pictures Few Christmas movies are as universally beloved as “Love Actually.”
Everyone knows someone, if not multiple someones, who cite it as their favorite holiday movie—and it might be time to ask why.
That seems to be the question on many people's minds after a 2020 Twitter thread breaking down the film's most bizarre points has gone viral again.
It's resurfaced just in time to underline what so many of us have already known since the movie first debuted in 2003.
"Love Actually" is absolutely bonkers!
Here are all the problematic aspects of 'Love Actually' that often get overlooked.
1. Nothing says Christmas like inappropriate workplace relationships.
Let’s begin where one Twitter user, George Fox does, with the character played by Hugh Grant.
Grant plays the Prime Minister of Britain in the film—which is all fine and good—even Prime Ministers should get to celebrate Christmas!
Except Grant’s storyline centers on him falling in love with the young assistant who brings him his tea.
Or as Fox so eloquently put it, he wants to “pork the help."
That's the sort of Yuletide hijinx that would be a one-way ticket to a resignation speech nowadays.
2. Throughout 'Love Actually,' Natalie is frequently fat-shamed and bullied for her weight.
Even worse, the assistant in question, Natalie, is repeatedly referred to as fat, mocked by one of the Prime Minister’s right-hand women as having "HUGE thighs" and legs "the size of tree trunks.”
Here’s what she looks like:
If you're nostalgic for the halcyon days of insane and unattainable beauty standards, have we got the movie for you!
Surely the rest of the movie is normal and fine and uplifting and heartfelt, right? LOL. No.
3. Men in 'Love Actually' are not allowed cry — even if their wife just died.
Quick question—what would you do if your spouse had just died, leaving you to raise a child alone, and your friend said this to you *the day after your wife’s funeral*?
If you said something like, “push her face-first into the bowl of egg nog” or “sob until I went unconscious,” congratulations—You are a normal person with normal emotional boundaries!
Who you are not is the character in this film, whose sadism cannot be overstated.
4. Speaking of boundaries, does no one in 'Love Actually' understand the codes of friendship?
While we're on the topic of sadism, let’s talk about this guy, Mark, who in real life would be the subject of an eight-part Netflix true-crime documentary series.
Mark is desperately in love with Juliet, the wife of his best friend.
We find this out via a wedding video Mark filmed for them that only contains shots of Juliet—yielding a video that plays like something found hidden under the floorboards in the home of a recently apprehended serial killer.
It's no wonder actor Andrew Lincoln himself was nervous to play the role he has described as "a creepy stalker."
Especially given the scene in which he turns up at Juliet's house unannounced to profess his undying love on a set of cue cards.
Listen, there is a reason YouTube has multiple iterations of this scene recut to look like a horror movie.
Oh also? Keira Knightley was 17 at the time this film was made. Merry Christmas!
Speaking of bizarre male-female relationships, how about the love story centering on Colin Firth's character?
RELATED: 20 Movies That Might Save Your Relationship
5. 'Love Actually' wants us to see even more inappropriate relationships in Colin Firth's storyline.
Firth plays a downtrodden writer named Jamie who hires a housekeeper named Aurelia.
Naturally, he instantly falls in love, despite not being able to communicate with her in any way because she speaks only Portuguese.
He then proposes to Aurelia days later, despite having never had a conversation with her on account of that whole her not speaking English thing.
And to our shock and awe Aurelia says yes—after her father consents of course, gleeful at what he thinks is a deal to sell his daughter into slavery. Yes, slavery.
Nothing says romance and holiday cheer like indentured servitude!
6. 'Love Actually' does not believe in airport security.
But as utterly insane as all of this is, it doesn’t hold a candle to the way this film ends—with an eight-year-old boy named Sam running through Heathrow airport to give his crush a kiss, jumping security barriers like hurdles — only two years after 9/11, might we add.
By now, the descent into madness that preceded the making of this film should be unavoidably clear.
But just in case you needed an underline of how deranged "Love Actually" is, consider that in its original version, Sam was... what for it... a trained gymnast who overpowers airport security with the power of gymnastics.
Fox summed the whole thing up best in the conclusion to his Twitter thread.
Yep, this film is a menace to everything we hold dear—and I'm still going to end up watching it for the one-millionth time this month.
None of us are any match for the madness of "Love Actually" in the end—it's tradition, after all!
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.