55 Thoughts I Had While Rewatching ‘Love Actually’

It’s the holiday season, which means it is definitively time to watch some terrible, shlocky Christmas movies that—nevertheless—manage to put a tear in your eye. (Just me?) Thus, in the grand tradition of Lindy West, whose Love Actually recap from 2013 deserves to be entered into the annals of history, I present to you a catalog of all the thoughts I had while revisiting this Christmas classic. Enjoy:

1. We open on some early-2000s shots of people having fun at the airport, because apparently that’s something people used to do? I don’t see a shot of a hungover young woman tearing up with misery in an endless Starbucks line four minutes before her flight boards, so I am feeling less than represented.
2. God, we don’t deserve Bill Nighy.
3. Aw, people are ice skating! Why don’t I ever go ice skating?
4. Colin Firth is running off to a wedding, leaving his mean girlfriend (foreshadowing) in bed. Never leave a mean girlfriend unattended, Colin!
5. Liam Neeson is bereaved, and it’s very sad. Emma Thompson isn’t particularly sensitive to his needs, but then again, I get the sense he’s been calling a lot. Her kid is going to play first lobster in the school nativity play, because apparently there was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus.
6. Two cute stand-ins are simulating sex on a movie set, and I do have to wonder whether sex stand-in is a full-time job or if they’re also stunt doubles.
7. Wedding time! Weird transphobic joke! Chiwetel Ejiofor looks super hot, as does his bride, Keira Knightley, but his best man/wedding videographer, Andrew Lincoln, looks a bit peaky. More on that later.
8. Now we enter a world where Hugh Grant is the newly elected prime minister. He meets his new aide Natalie, who’s extremely cute and swears a lot.
9. I know the obviousness of Hugh Grant’s crush is supposed to be endearing, but in a post-#MeToo world, it’s sort of a bummer.
10. I am very interested in the little feather Keira Knightley has woven into her wedding hairdo. Very Carrie Bradshaw’s-wedding-hat!
11. Oh naaaaur, Mean Girlfriend is cheating on Colin Firth with his brother. That just seems unnecessary. Anyway, he’s off to France to bang away at a typewriter, because it’s 1957.
12. I’m just not going to dignify the horny-sandwich-guy plotline with much recapping, except when it becomes absolutely necessary.
13. Boobs!
14. Oh, God, am I horny sandwich guy?
15. Funeral time 🙁 Liam Neeson has an extremely adorable little stepson, who is clearly very traumatized by his mother’s death.
16. Ah, now we get down to the heart and soul of the film: Laura Linney, who clocks that Andrew Lincoln is being a little weird about his best friend’s wedding because she’s perceptive and perfect, and I wish she were my wife.
17. Alan Rickman, in yet another plotline that doesn’t pass the #MeToo test, is being ensorcelled by his hot, mean assistant, but he still finds time to call Laura Linney out for being in love with a colleague named Karl. Aw.
18. I just realized right now that the place where they work is a design agency. I honestly thought it was a magazine or something.
19. Laura Linney is always on the phone, for reasons unknown.
20. Everyone thinks Connell from Normal People reinvented the chain-for-guys look, but it was actually Bill Nighy in this movie.
21. Ugh, gross Britney Spears joke.
22. Now for one of the weirdest subplots in this movie: Natalie and Hugh Grant chat, and she explains that her boyfriend dumped her because she was getting fat. Gah! The horror!
23. Liam Neeson is worried about his brooding stepson, and Emma Thompson wisely notes that “it was always going to be a totally shit time.” I have thought of this more than once in times of grief.
24. Aw, stepson is in love! Actually!
25. Suddenly, Liam Neeson and stepson have converted their home into a war room with which to win over his crush.
26. Immortal line from Bill Nighy: “Kids, don’t do drugs. Become a pop star and they’ll give you them for free!”
27. Andrew Lincoln is still being weird to Keira Knightley, and Chiwetel Ejiofor is wearing a very shiny shirt. Keira begs Andrew to let her come over and see his footage from the wedding, and he reluctantly accepts.
28. Another subplot that doesn’t age too well, TBH: Colin Firth meets and instantly falls for his young Portuguese maid, who does not speak a word of English, and he doesn’t speak Portuguese, but you can tell a lot from a look, apparently.
29. Hugh Grant meets with a very obvious, slimy, George-Bush-meets-Bill-Clinton type who’s being a dick about trade agreements or something. His far greater sin is hitting on Natalie, which Hugh Grant can’t forgive. Is this how politics works?
30. Hugh Grant, all fired up, gives an ass-kicking speech about how much America sucks, and everyone loves it. Also, why is the U.S. president wearing a hot pink tie?
31. Oh, yeah, I forgot Hugh Grant is Emma Thompson’s brother. Small world in London, innit?
32. Emma Thompson rhapsodizes about how much she loves “Blue” by Joni Mitchell because she and Laura Linney are the only two relatable and cool people in this movie.
33. Okay, this scene does hold up: Hugh Grant triumphantly dances through 10 Downing Street, and I love it as much as I did when I was 11.
34. Colin Firth’s maid, Aurelia, accidentally drowns his manuscript in a pond and dives in to get it in her underwear. He’s even more smitten, and she has a tattoo, so you know she’s a baddie.
35. I don’t really care about anyone in this subplot, but it’s still rough stuff when Keira Knightley comes over to watch Andrew Lincoln’s wedding video, realizes all the shots are of her, and figures out that he doesn’t hate her; he actually loves her, quite a lot. Oof.
36. Natalie quits, and one of Hugh Grant’s employees calls her “that chubby girl.” I hate this movie.
37. Aw, Liam Neeson and stepson watch Titanic to get ideas about romance. Okay, I like this movie again.
38. Office party time! Alan Rickman’s hot, mean assistant is dressed as a devil, because I guess she thinks it’s Halloween?
39. OMG, Laura Linney totes dances with Karl, who is, indeed, hot as hell.
40. They go home together, complete with a very relatable moment where Laura Linney leaves him in her foyer and rushes to clean her apartment, but she’s called away at the last minute. Damn.
41. This is sad: We learn that Laura Linney is always on the phone because she has a brother with some sort of disability that requires 24-hour care and occasionally makes him violent.
42. That cheating (or would-be cheating) scoundrel Alan Rickman buys a fancy necklace at the mall…but for whom? We shall see.
43. Hey, it’s Mr. Bean!
44. Aw, the sex stand-ins are falling for one another. No notes, I like this subplot.
45. Colin Firth is learning Portuguese now that he’s back in the U.K. without Aurelia because he’s a freaking mensch.
46. Okay, I guess I can’t avoid it anymore: Horny sandwich guy makes his way to the U.S. and inexplicably hooks up with three insanely hot women, including Elisha Cuthbert and January Jones. Whatever.
47. Another genuinely sad scene: Emma Thompson thinks she’s getting that necklace for Christmas, but Alan Rickman, who sucks, actually gives her a copy of Joni Mitchell’s Blue. It’s her favorite album, dude, she obviously already has it! She excuses herself briefly to cry in her room, and I cry right alongside her because moms are the best and deserve the world.
48. Colin Firth turns up to celebrate Christmas with his family, including his dastardly brother, then immediately peaces out to find Aurelia. King.
49. Barf me, we’ve come to a scene I truly hate: Andrew Lincoln shows up to Keira Knightley’s door with cue cards telling her he loves her, pretends he’s a carol singer, yadda yadda, you’ve seen the movie. The only good part is when he sternly tells himself, “Enough, now.”
50. Natalie sends Hugh Grant a sweet Christmas card professing her love, and he begins a hunt to find her at her address (which I have to assume would be in her employment records?).
51. He ends up coming to the lobster nativity with her, and they fully make out, and everyone sees. Aw.
52. Stepson’s crush performs at the assembly with her famous singer mother, and it’s beautiful, but then they’re off back to America, so Stepson and Liam Neeson begin a madcap rush to the airport that ends with Stepson sneaking past security and totally getting kissed. Adorable, but slightly less so when I remember that TSA threw out my four-ounce moisturizer the last time I flew.
53. Emma Thompson confronts Alan Rickman, telling him, “You’ve made the life I lead foolish too” (sob), but the two appear to be vaguely okay in the end?
54. Now it’s just a love parade: Liam Neeson gets with Claudia Schiffer(?); Colin Firth gets with Aurelia, who has been studying English; and horny sandwich guy gets with seemingly every woman in America (and even brings one back for his friend, like she’s a Toblerone). Hugh Grant and Natalie are dating. Hooray! Merry Christmas! The end.
55. One more thing: Why is seemingly nobody in all of England celebrating Hanukkah?

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