'Don't hate me, but I think your favourite Christmas movie is overrated'

Is it possible for a rom-com to be any less romantic?

In 2024, Love Actually will be celebrating its 21st year gracing televisions, movie theatres, and perhaps even stages with accompanying orchestras across the world in the lead up to Christmas.

It’s a beautifully made movie, and a pretty entertaining one overall. I understand why it’s a cult classic and why for so many people, it’s the one Christmas movie they continue to watch and love year after year.

But, in the conversation of which Christmas movies are truly the best, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I think it’s a little overrated.

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My case against Love Actually

Let me start this off by saying, I love Christmas. Buying and wrapping gifts for the people I love, walking around to see the lights, and eating homemade trifle are some of my favourite things in the world.

I also love Christmas movies, and will watch just about anything where a baker/journalist/lawyer girl leaves the big city to go home to her small country town, reunites with her high school boyfriend who now owns a struggling business that needs to be saved by Christmas, and they inevitably fall in love.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with liking Christmas movies like that. Clearly, a lot of people do - that’s why about a million of them come out each year, all in the span of a month.

Sure, they’re about as cheesy as they come, and the acting is often average at best, but they’re cheery, reel you in, and always have a happy ending - just about everything Love Actually isn’t.

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The loveless rom-com

At its core, Love Actually is a film about love, of course. How it can be complicated and comes in all different shapes and sizes.

One thing I think the movie does really well is establishing ‘meet cutes’ and other introductions to the couples which make you fall in love with them and want to continue to root for them over the course of the movie.

However, as you continue watching, it quickly becomes apparent that the rom-com isn’t really all that romantic at all.

Of course, you have your traditional rom-com stories in there, with Natalie and the Prime Minister, a baby Thomas Brodie-Sangster tracking down his crush, and John and Judy falling in love - all of which, I can get behind.

But then, I have to sit through a man hitting on his best friend’s wife in a way that’s for some reason supposed to make them likeable, and watching Emma Thompson’s face drop as her character realises her husband bought a necklace for another woman.

Coming to the end of the movie with an ending that’s supposed to be happy feels a little incomplete for me, knowing that for many characters, it’s really quite the opposite.

Is it all just a little too complicated?

I do have a few more personal gripes, though, which probably don’t help my stance of it being overrated.

Generally, I’m not a fan of an ensemble cast - with the exception of the so-bad-it’s-good 2010 classic Valentine’s Day, which I watch way too often.

I feel as though it doesn’t give viewers the opportunity to get to know the characters well enough to be invested in all of their stories. There are always going to be a few storylines that stand out, whilst others fade into the background, made worse when there’s an attempt to interlink them at the end.

This is well and truly the case for Love Actually.

I get the appeal of hiring every iconic British actor for one movie, sure. But with so much going on at once, many are reduced to cameos, with even supposed leads becoming cardboard cutouts with no real character development or a proper ending. What happens to Karen and Harry? What about Sarah and Karl? How was John and Judy’s date? Why is there no fallout to the Juliet and Mark kiss??

I’m also not a fan of Love Actually’s almost obsessive fat shaming. I know, it was 2003, and all of it would have gotten a pass back then, but hearing the little comments throughout calling out the women in the movie for their size makes me cringe, and takes me out of the moment completely.

That being said, if you’d like to find me this Christmas, I’ll probably be watching The Holiday instead - which I think even has a better soundtrack (an arguably hotter hot take).

Originally published as 'Don't hate me, but I think your favourite Christmas movie is overrated'