There is 'nothing' wrong with Love Actually

It is the festive romcom that gets millions of viewers into the Christmas spirit every year.

But now Richard Curtis's star-studded film Love Actually has been attacked in a volley of hate comments from young, woke critics who have lambasted it as creepy, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic and even fat-shaming.

They accuse the writers of being offensive in a number of the 2003 film's storylines, particularly those featuring actresses Keira Knightley and Martine McCutcheon... More here.

I hate the use of the terms 'snowflakes' and 'woke', and I hate linking to the Daily Mail, but I also hate that a film from 2003 is criticised for simply being of its time.

I am what this newspaper would call woke, but I am not a snowflake. Ironically the snowflakes tend to be on the right of politics because they get upset about literally everything and I suspect that this is just an attempt at a publication to make something a much bigger and louder deal than it actually is. They have often magnified single incidents to make it sound as though the country is turning left-wing and woke, and that is no doubt happening here, but...

If we start objecting to humour and comments from less than 20 years ago as being hateful and if we then do not see these films aired again what would we be left with?

We would have no history at all and almost everything from more than a decade ago could be off limits. Just imagine that.

As it happens, we watched Love Actually on Christmas Eve and it is one of only two Christmas films we watch each year with the other being Die Hard. Love Actually has one of the best casts ever seen in a film, a series of interlinked stories flowing through it and more iconic moments than almost any other film. It is joyful, uplifting and at times the humour is blunt, but the world would be poorer without it.

The moral of the story is to not read the Daily Mail, watch Love Actually and enjoy the humour, and to understand that Die Hard is a Christmas film.

PS. If you get a chance please watch Don't Look Up on Netflix. Hilarious, brilliant cast and some interesting similarities to the Covid / Trump / Biden era.