Best festive movie: Love Actually vs Muppet Christmas Carol

No-one, least of all Hugh Grant, could have predicted the crazy level of success Love Actually would enjoy. But for my family, another festival movie is top of the Christmas tree. What do you think? Do our POLL

Forget Love Actually — the Christmas movie reunion I’m here for is The Muppet Christmas Carol.

The cast of Love Actually has reunited for an American TV special, marking 20 years since the movie came out. Even though it’s 19 years, actually – it hit cinemas in 2003.

Diane Sawyer is hosting The Laughter and Secrets of Love Actually: 20 Years Later and the veteran presenter is talking to the stars of the festive flick that just won’t go away.

In the special, she chats to Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Bill Nighy, Laura Linney and creator Richard Curtis about what gives the movie its magic.

Grant says he didn’t want to do “that dance”, despite it enjoying a resurgence as a TikTok trend some two decades later, and it’s revealed after he first saw the screening, he asked Thompson, “Is that the most psychotic thing we’ve ever been in?”.

TV audiences will soon be treated to a 20-year anniversary celebration of the release of Love Actually (even if its actually only been 19 years).

No-one, least of all Hugh, could have predicted the crazy level of success Love Actually would go on to enjoy, which has presumably kept Curtis in mince pies ever since.

I have to admit, Love Actually isn’t my favourite offering in the Boxing Day Buffet of Brit Flicks – my first choice will always be 1994’s Four Weddings and a Funeral.

But I can see why people like it and, to be fair, we could all do with a dose of feel-good (even though it also featured many “feel-bad” vignettes, no-one can ever listen to Joni Mitchell the same way again) films.

But while we’re revelling in the 20-hope-nobody-realises-it’s-actually-19-year reunion, let it not overshadow the other Christmas cracker enjoying its 30-year anniversary.

And yes, I checked, it really is 30; The Muppet Christmas Carol came out in 1992.

The Michael Caine/Muppet rendition of the classic Christmas story is the No.1 favourite festive film in our house and we watch it religiously every year.

My family will happily watch The Muppet Christmas Carol every year.

It’s pleasingly true to the book, apart from, well, the Muppet part.

So much so, I feel even Charles Dickens would have given Kermit’s performance as Bob Cratchit a round of applause, laughed at Gonzo portraying the writer himself and wept with the rest of us at the sight of Tiny Tim’s forgotten frog-leg crutch.

If the Muppets-meets-the-classics doesn’t melt your heart every December, then, like Scrooge, you haven’t learned any of life’s lessons.

As Caine’s Ebenezer says in the movie, “I will honour Christmas, and try to keep it all the year! I will live my life in the past, the present, and the future. I will not shut out the lessons the spirits have taught me.”

A Christmas Carol’s Ebenezer Scrooge is a classic scharacter (even when played by a Muppet not David Wehnam).

Muppets are my idea of A-listers.

“And I will watch The Muppet Christmas Carol every December,” he should have added. Otherwise it’s all humbug.

This year, you can get into the spirits of Christmas live — to celebrate its 30th milestone, The Muppet Christmas Carol is being screened in concert, with the score performed live by orchestras, at venues around the country.

Watch it this December and every December and in the words of that other Christmas-tradition movie, Casablanca, which coincidentally celebrates its 80th birthday this year, “We’ll always have the Muppets.”
Or something like that.