Even Richard Curtis Thinks Love Actually Is Rubbish

Film  Hello.  I know that apart from the all too obviously auto-posting BBC Mondays I haven't been around here much, but with Doctor Who's anniversary cranking up, the Sugababes glow-up, the Empire Magazine project which I've been writing about on BlueSky (@feelinglistless.bsky.social) having abandoned Twixxer and having finally reached 100% on Star Wars Lego: The Skywalker Saga, I expect there'll be the odd thing.  Not that I'm making any kind of promises; I shall not be entering the existential void of every post being about how I should post more.

But I couldn't not return for the news made pretty obvious from the headline to this post.  Richard Curtis thinks Love Actually is rubbish as well now.  It's even made the cover of the Daily Star:

It's been reported in a lot of places, but let's link the Chortle version which is where I first heard the news.  Curtis was at the Cheltenham Literary Festival being interviewed on stage by his daughter Charlotte, how put to him many of the points I made in the sixth most popular post on this blog about the treatment of women, particularly the "multiple accounts of inappropriate boss behaviour [...] and how in the general the women are visions of unattainable loveliness".

The writer who should never have been his own directors said:

• "I think I was unobservant and not as clever as I should have been."

• On diversity:  "I think because I came from a very undiverse school and bunch of university friends, I think that I hung on to the feeling that I wouldn’t know how to write those parts.  I think I was just stupid and wrong about that. I felt as though me, my casting director, my producers just didn’t look outwards."

• On fatphobia: "I remember how shocked I was five years ago when Scarlett said to me, "You can never use the word fat again". And, wow, you were right. In my generation, calling someone "chubby" ... in Love, Actually, there are endless jokes about that. I think I was behind the curve and those jokes aren’t any longer funny."

They weren't funny then, especially because you were describing the character played by Martine McCutcheon and how that reflects back on younger viewers who may be struggling with their own body image.  The only reason I didn't mention that in my dissertation is because I was making a comparison with the treatment of gender and race in two other films, Happy Ending and Short Cuts.

Of course, Love Actually is over twenty years old now and edging ever closer to "vintage" and "of its time" labelling.  There are humans walking around on this planet who're in their twenties who were born after it was originally released.  It was released the same year Russell T Davies was commissioned to write and producer the Doctor Who revival.  

Does this mean I'm willing to relax a little, perhaps admit that it isn't the worst film of all time?  No, not a bit because that would require me to choose a different film and although About Time, The Boat That Rocked (or Pirate Radio if you're outside the UK) and Yesterday are waiting in the wings, I'm too vintage myself now to go through that mental hardship.