Love Actually (2003)
Retro Review #33: They actually use the word “actually” frequently in this film. I merely follow their lead...
Love Actually (2003) — They actually use the word “actually” frequently in this film. I merely follow their lead…
+ Feature film, £, 2h 15m🎖️⭐
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B ^
Family Suitability
+ ❌3️⃣ Heavy adults-only content. | R
Alignment with Judeo-Christian Values
+ ⛔3️⃣ Very Poor/Heavily Unfavorable
+ 1️⃣/2 videos in Love Actually video series ⭐
Love Actually (2003)
Grade: B ^ (1.0) / HOF: 0
EQ 👍A- | 📖A- 👥A 📽️B 🎼A+
DW 🚫3.2 | 🌚6 🌝3
POPCAP 💯n/a 🍿n/a 🧢n/a
L-R ☮️n/a ◀️n/a ▶️n/a 🛐n/a
Love Actually was a unanimous inclusion on all ten of the all-time best Christmas movie lists I checked. It’s also widely considered to be a “chick flick”, and I’ve actually heard more than one person of the male persuasion say that he hated this movie.
Me, I’m a sucker for romance and like good movies of all kinds, even chick flicks. I remember watching this not long after it was originally released. I remember there were moments I really liked a lot, but that my overall impression was pretty neutral. Ultimately I found the movie forgettable, and actually forgot what I liked and didn’t like about it.
Watching it a second time, now I actually remember.
Two different summaries of Love Actually that I read disagree over whether the film consists of nine intertwined stories or ten. Who actually cares? Either way, it’s too many. With that many stories, there’s bound to be a stinker or two that lower the quality of the film, right? Right. There are a couple here with no redeeming value whatsoever. The surprise is that most of the stories are very, very good—sweet, charming, heartbreaking, dramatic, and, most often, romantic.
Love Actually is considered to be a romcom, but though there are a few very funny moments, there are far more tender amusing moments than big laughs, and there’s actually a lot more romance and drama than comedy. Probably a lot of men dislike the film for that reason—it sets a very high bar for romantic gestures that few of us can reach, let alone exceed!
The all-star cast is mostly British and mostly very good. To name a few, in no particular order: Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Laura Linney, Emma Thompson, Andrew Lincoln, Keira Knightley, Martine McCutcheon, Alan Rickman and Rowan Atkinson. While it isn't surprising that Atkinson participates in one of the funniest scenes in the film, you might be surprised that Rickman is actually his comedic equal in the scene.
And the cherry on top is that there is actually a rare, surprisingly good performance in the film from a child actor, Thomas Sangster.
The Love Actually soundtrack is not actually holiday focused, instead delivering a mix of well-known soft pop hits that all seem to be just the right choice for their moments in the movie.
The film’s downfall is its amoral viewpoint. Love Actually is an adults only film. Its tagline is “love actually is all around” and the opening narration makes that claim to prove the point that the world is not as dark as people claim. Well, sure, if you have this film’s godless opinion that lots of dark deeds are not dark at all.
Perhaps the movie doesn’t actually celebrate foul language, nudity, pornography and immoral sexual behavior, but one could argue that it does. At the very least it shows no signs of disapproving of any of that, with one tiny exception—the pain of a character whose spouse cheats is portrayed very well in one scene.
From that point on the consequences of the betrayal are actually minimized. But since most of the other stories in the film deal with brand-new, idealized, romantic, and/or lusty love, the cheating story allows a more thoughtful viewer to question the movie’s implied message that it’s those idealized feelings which are the true meaning of love, to be valued above all else.
In the end, I think Love Actually actually undercuts its premise that the world is not as dark as people claim by sugar-coating and glossing over the underlying darkness in a few of its many stories.
So I’m still pretty neutral on this film. There are a lot of breathtakingly good moments, so I call A- on the entertainment value. Still, even apart from the amoral viewpoint, there are some cliched moments and a few stories that don't work well, or at all. So for their own individual reasons, it’s not surprising to me that some people love Love Actually and some people actually hate it.
Onwards!
+ last viewed (3) 2026-01-10, HDX7, 2.39, 5M
+ first viewed 2024?, sd3, 2.39vv, 2D
+ 🎈🎄🎅🥰😍😏😥🥸🎧🎬
Family Suitability Detail
+ ❌3️⃣ Heavy adults-only content. | R
+ 😡+2 😵💫+1 🤬-3 🫢-3 🫣-3
Judeo-Christian Values Detail
+ ⛔3️⃣ Very Poor/Heavily Unfavorable
+ ✝️ -2 ➕✝️😇❤️❤️💒💒🩸🩸 ➖😍😍😍🗿(☢️)🤬(💣)🩳👙👙👙(🍺)💉
+ ✡️ -4 ➕(✡️)🌗🌗😊(🤍) ➖😍😍😍🗿(☢️)🤬🤬🤬🌓🌓🌓🫢🫢🫢
+ 🗽 -2 ➕🇬🇧💛 ➖😍😍😍🗿(☢️)🇺🇳
☢️=nihilism
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Originally posted to text group 2024-12-22
Re-reviewed and updated 2026-01-11
Note from Rick Retro: This review was originally posted December 22, 2024 to a select group of friends and family via a text group. We have roughly five times as many subscribers in our community now, so I am working on formatting and uploading all those old reviews to Substack for all of you and future subscribers as well.
At that time, I had not completely developed my full review format, so I am also re-reviewing most of these works to match the format of my newer reviews. Since these posts were almost entirely holiday themed from a 2024 Christmas Tour, I am now uploading these reviews as part of a 2025 Christmas Tour, all intended to get my archives completed while giving new subscribers a chance to experience older reviews on a measured basis.
But if you’d rather just start from the original beginning, visit this post and follow the “Next (all sections) ➡️” links at the end of each post, until you arrive at this one, where that link will be dead, until I upload the next post from our text group archives 😉. When the next post is not yet available, there will be a link to the post that is “Next Available, skipping over text group posts not yet uploaded ➡️”
The first post to Substack after the current “Text Group Gaps” of posts I have not yet uploaded can be found here. From this post, following the “Next (all sections) ➡️” links will bring you all the way to the most current post.
This note will disappear when the next text group post is added, and this review takes its rightful spot in our archives. For now, I hope you enjoy this look into Christmas past!