Shit, Actually

by Lindy West

  Her. That woman. That’s what you have to screw.

  Liam Neeson doesn’t know what to do because his eleven-year-old stepkid (whose MOM JUST DIED) seems to sit around in his room being sad a lot (!?!!?!?!?). Emma Thompson drops by to cheer him up with her own signature combo of product placement, synth strings, and being a fucking asshole for no reason.

  From now on, every time I see a box of Frosted Flakes, I will think of Liam Neeson crying.

  To be perfectly honest, Liam Neeson is really acting the hell out of this movie.

  Okay, turns out, the kid—whose name is Sam and who’s played by Jojen Reed from Game of Thrones (what the fuck was the point of that character, BY THE WAY????? And I read the books!)—is “in love” with a girl named Joanna (which is his dead mom’s name, which the movie could have just not done!!!!!!!!!), but she doesn’t know he exists. Probably because he’s been hanging out with the men of Love Actually too much, so he just sits around feeling sorry for himself instead of talking to her like a human being.

  When Sam tells Liam Neeson that’s why he’s depressed, Liam Neeson laughs in his face. Then they come up with nine hundred different strategies to “make” Joanna fall in love with him. Weirdly, none of the strategies are “Say hi to her.” Also not considered: “You’re eleven. Calm down, baby boy.”

  (Ugh, Jojen, just put this movie out of its misery with your frog spear already.)

  Hugh Grant offers to have Natalie’s ex-boyfriend murdered for telling her that her thighs are too large—which is an especially adorable flirtation when you consider that he’s a major world leader whose office has historically colonized half the world and bombed and murdered countless actual human beings. BUT IT’S PRETTY FUNNY IN THIS CONTEXT BECAUSE HE WANTS TO GET SOME HOT SNATCH.

  Then he looks up at a photograph of Margaret Thatcher and calls her a “saucy minx.”

  Hey, idea: I’m no Thatcher stan, but could someone respect a woman for one second in this movie? Or could we at least confine the misogyny to women who are actual characters in the film?

  Okay. Seriously. Is this Colin Firth story line actually about human trafficking? Colin Firth shows up in France and this 90 Day Fiancé just gets dropped off at his house and he “falls in love with her” even though they cannot communicate and the only thing he knows about her is that he’s really, really into her butt. But it’s “love”! So he just “has” her now! She’s “his”! Colin Firth decided they should be together without ever saying a single word to each other, and so that’s what happens. Congratulations, now you have a weird stranger who lives in your house and fat-shames you in Portuguese. “Love.”

  This entire movie is just straight white men acting upon women that they think they “deserve.” This entire movie is just men doing things!

  Also, who writes their novel on loose pages on a typewriter in an open-air shack next to a pond? Amelia Bedelia?

  Billy Bob Thornton, the president of America, comes to visit Hugh Grant. In the hallway, they run into Natalie Fatalie, and this exchange occurs:

  Billy Bob Thornton: How’s your day so far?

  Natalie: [Indistinguishable giggle.]

  Billy Bob Thornton: Excellent.

  First of all, how are you not gonna answer the president of the United States when he asks you how your day’s going, Natalie!? Too busy thinking about ham, I bet.

  And second of all, once again, IT NEVER FUCKING MATTERS WHAT WOMEN SAY. THE WRITERS LITERALLY JUST TOOK A LINE AWAY FROM A WOMAN AND REPLACED IT WITH A NONSENSE SYLLABLE. SHE COULD HAVE ACTUALLY SAID SOMETHING, AND INSTEAD SHE JUST GOES “MEEP MEEP” AND BILLY BOB THORNTON POPS A BONER.

  Third of all, it kind of seems like less a depiction of our president and more like Billy Bob Thornton just broke character when that girl walked by.

  I find it personally insulting to imply that I belong to a species this simple.

  Later, at a press conference, Hugh Grant causes a major international incident because Billy Bob sexually assaulted a property he likes:

  I love that word relationship. Covers all manner of sins, doesn’t it? I fear that this has become a bad relationship. A relationship based on the president taking exactly what he wants and casually ignoring all those things that really matter to, erm…Britain. We may be a small country, but we’re a great one, too. The country of William Shakespeare, Churchill, the Beatles, Sean Connery, Harry Potter. David Beckham’s right foot. David Beckham’s left foot, come to that. And a friend who bullies us is no longer a friend. And since bullies only respond to strength, from now onward, I will be prepared to be much stronger. And the president should be prepared for that.

  HE’S TALKING ABOUT HIS PENIS, YOU GUYS. It might be a small penis, but it wrote Harry Potter.

  Everything in this movie is fucking insane. That’s not how press conferences work. That’s not how diplomacy works. That’s not how prime ministers work. NOTHING IS HOW ANYTHING WORKS. That’s not how weddings work, that’s not how audio recording works, that’s not how saxophones work, that’s not how hair works, that’s not how business meetings work, that’s not how art works, that’s not how grief works, that’s not how primary school Christmas concerts work, that’s not how airports work, that’s not how music charts work, that’s not how fat works, and none of it is how “love” works.

  Keira Knightley, wearing an unacceptable hat, goes over to the best man’s house to look at his video of her wedding.

  Turns out, the wedding video he took is 100 percent close-ups of her face because the dude is a fucking psychopath.

  Keira Knightley: They’re all of me.

  Worst Guy: Yeah.

  Yeah, I took it so I could watch it later over and over when I’m alone in my house thinking about your skin.

  Instead of calling British 911, she’s flattered.

  Thanks, Love Actually. Thank you for telling a generation of men that their intrusiveness and obsessions are “romantic,” and that women are secretly flattered no matter what their body language (or mouth!) says.

  Was the score to this movie just a page with “doo dee doo dee doo doo dee doo dee doo doo dee doo dee doo doo dee doo dee doo” scribbled all over it?

  Hugh Grant decides he needs to fire Natalie because she’s 2 tempting 2 believe. Then he has this Actual Conversation with his secretary:

  Secretary: The chubby girl?

  Hugh Grant: Would we call her chubby?

  Secretary: I think there’s a pretty sizable ass there, yes, sir. Huge thighs.

  Can we not refer to a woman who worked her way up to a job in the prime minister’s office as “the chubby girl”? Also, can we fire the entire government for sexual harassment?

  Liam Neeson and Jojen Reed relax and watch Titanic to regroup because that’s something middle-aged men and little kids do together. Jojen is still totally stumped about the best way to force Joanna to love him against her will. I mean, he’s tried everything. He tried staring at her, he tried never talking to her, he tried complaining to his dad, he tried watching Titanic…seriously, what is it going to TAKE, Joanna!?

  Then, light bulb! “There’s this big concert at the end of term, and Joanna’s in it, and I thought that if I was in the band and played absolutely superbly, there’s a chance that she might fall in love with me.”

  OH MY GOD, OR YOU COULD JUST GO TALK TO HER.

  TALK TO HER.

  TALK TO HER.

  Despite still never having had a conversation with him, Laura Linney finally gets her coworker Karl back to her house for intercourse. They get in the door and go straight to the bed (wouldn’t want to wander into the living room and accidentally have a conversation), where we finally find out Laura Linney’s TERRIBLE SECRET.

  She has a brother.

  And he calls sometimes.

  To be more specific, Laura Linney has a mentally ill brother who lives in a facility and calls her frequently for reassurance and comfort, and she always takes his calls because she loves him deeply and feels responsible for his well-being n
ow that their parents are dead.

  DEAL BREAKER. Karl’s out.

  I can’t believe Laura Linney showed her boobs for this.

  Alan Rickman buys a fancy sex necklace for vagina-secretary and Emma Thompson finds it in his pocket and gets all excited and then cries when all she gets for Christmas is a Joni Mitchell CD that I’m sure she already had because she said earlier in the movie that Joni Mitchell is her fucking favorite singer. But yeah, I’m sure you found a SECRET JONI MITCHELL CD she’d never heard of, asshole!

  Anyway, I hope Emma Thompson learned her lesson about being a human being made of perishable cells. Guh-ross.

  Love Actually puts a lot of stock in the idea that people are either good or bad. People either love or they don’t, reciprocate or they don’t. The grander the gesture, the greater the crime of not reciprocating. LOVE GOOD. NOT-LOVE BAD. It’s a nice fantasy because if, instead, you accept the difficult truth that people are more than just good or bad, then you have to question whether or not happiness really exists. Because if people are more complicated, then happiness must be more complicated, and at that point, is it really happiness?

  Oh, god, why am I bothering. Actually.

  Liam Neeson tries to explain to Jojen Reed what love is by describing his sex life: “Wanton sex in every room of the house, including yours.”

  Hey, why are you always talking to that kid about sex like that?

  Like, get a friend.

  That best man guy shows up at Keira Knightley’s house and spawns a decade of nice-guy emotional manipulation reframed as “romance.” And Keira Knightley fucking kisses him for it.

  I know it’s early, but I’m calling it. Artistic low point of the twenty-first century.

  Meanwhile, Hugh Grant realizes he should never have fired Natalie for having too much juice in the caboose (MAINLY BECAUSE THAT IS ILLEGAL), and so it’s grand gesture time!!! He hops in the misuse-of-government-funds-mobile and has the driver take him to Natalie’s street, where he knocks on every door looking for her, because apparently the UK government does not keep records of the contact information of recent employees AND ALSO THE PRIME MINISTER DOES NOT HAVE A CELL PHONE.

  When Hugh Grant finally tracks Natalie down, her horrible family bullies him into accompanying them to the school Christmas play, but not before Natalie’s dad calls her “Plumpy” in front of the prime minister.

  They begin to profess their “love” for one another in the car but don’t get very far because there’s a kid dressed as a papier-mâché octopus crammed in between them. Thanks for nothing, cock-blocktopus!

  The pair sneaks backstage and starts making out during the big finale, only to have their “secret” tryst revealed when the curtain rises and they’re kissing in the middle of the set. Hey, prime minister, we all like making out with fat chicks, but WHY DON’T YOU EVER GO TO WORK? DON’T YOU HAVE AN ENGLAND TO RUN?

  Colin Firth goes all the way home to London, but as soon as he gets there, he realizes he forgot his Portuguese sex maid on the baggage carousel or something. So he abandons Christmas dinner with his loving family and flies back to France. The one expression of genuine love in this movie and Colin Firth peaces out to go hump a stranger.

  He shows up at Aurelia’s front door and starts yelling at her father in shitty Portuguese. He’s like, “I am here to ask your daughter for her hand in marriage,” and the dad is like, “Say what!?” because he thinks Colin Firth means his other daughter, who is fat and gross, and that would obviously make no sense because women who are slightly larger than some other women deserve to be in the garbage. Then the dad offers to pay Colin Firth to take fat daughter off his hands. Colin Firth is like, “Ew, no. I only want to purchase/marry HOT women I’ve never spoken to in my life.”

  Once the truth gets sorted out, fat daughter says, “Father is about to sell Aurelia as a slave to this Englishman.”

  FIRST SENSIBLE LINE ANYONE’S SAID FOR THIS ENTIRE MOVIE.

  Fat Daughter: You’d better not say yes, Father.

  The Dad: Shut up, Miss Dunkin’ Donuts 2003.

  DAD, I WON A CONTEST. BE HAPPY FOR ME.

  Oh, also Jojen Reed has now chased Joanna all the way to the airport, where he’s broken through security and is leading agents on a “wacky” chase to the gate. Do I need to mention that this kid is white?

  Colin Firth and this entire French village (who, again, apparently all speak only Portuguese) finally arrive at the restaurant where Aurelia works. Rumors are running wild among the crowd at this point:

  “Apparently, he is going to kill Aurelia!”

  “Cool!”

  GOOD JOKE.

  When they get there, Aurelia looks horrified and is like, “What the fuck are you doing at my work!? I don’t even know you, dude! Get out of here! Oh my god, I’M TRYING TO RUN A RESTAURANT HERE. GO AWAY, YOU CREEPY ENGLISHMAN.”

  No. Just kidding. She agrees to marry the guy. Forever. Even though they have never spoken.

  In a painfully fitting finale, Colin returns from America with the woman he got, and it’s Shannon freaking Elizabeth. He literally brings her back to England with him like an airport souvenir. But don’t worry, Tony, HE IMPORTED AN OBJECT WITH NO AGENCY FOR YOU TOO. HERE, PUT YOUR MOUTH ON IT.

  That’s love, kids.

  Oh, wait. Actually, it’s shit.

  RATING: 0/10 DVDs of The Fugitive.

  On Marriage

  We’re taught, from when we are very young, that the ultimate purpose of marriage—the work of love—is to become one of those elderly couples you see in People magazine, who met in the one-room schoolhouse when they were eleven, who were each other’s first kiss, who stayed true through the war, who never said an unkind word, who died holding hands in their sleep at one hundred. Aren’t they sweet? Look at how he looked at her. Look at her little hat.

  I already know that I’m not going to die in a bonnet in People magazine because I’m nearly forty, and that’s not my marriage. I married a difficult, crazy guy. My husband married an anxious, insecure woman. Sometimes our shortcomings rub against each other painfully. Sometimes things get dark—occasionally in an active, explosive way, but more often in a passive, resentful way, where you snap to and realize you haven’t really looked at each other in months. He creates chaos. I micromanage. We’ve both had to forgive each other for a lot of things.

  Having been through a real marriage, it’s hard for me not to feel like those perfect old dead couples are lying, or in denial, or maybe they just didn’t go deep enough, maybe they were always too scared. The truth is that you simply can’t make it into adulthood unscathed. And if somehow you did, you wouldn’t have the perspective and empathy to properly care for another human being for the rest of both your lives. It’s impossible. Everyone’s going to have their shit.

  My husband and I met when we were twenty-three, became best friends and started dating when we were twenty-nine, and got married when we were thirty-three. We’re thirty-eight now, and that means we’ve seen each other through selfish youth and the onset of back pain and the deaths of parents and the disorienting transition from fun to tired, and somehow we still want to be together. Even in our worst moments, we still crack each other up and hold each other at night.

  The true work of love isn’t staying together when things are perfect; it’s staying together even when things are awful, weathering catastrophic mistakes (within reason) because, well, you decided to, and because you know the potential is as real as the now. It turns your partnership into something that grows instead of something that atrophies. You’re promising another person not just passion and love but a safety net, some degree of stability and certainty in a fucking terrible world. You’re saying, “I promise I will stay with you even if you suck for a while,” an almost narcotic comfort that we all deserve.

  I don’t dream of dying adorable; I dream of dying calloused and wise, of looking my husband in the eyes and saying, “Remember that thing we almost didn’t survive? Aren’t you so glad we did?” />
  At the same time, though.

  I cannot fucking imagine.

  The look.

  On my face.

  If my husband came to me and said…

  “Honey…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Honey.”

  “What is it?”

  “Honey, I have something to tell you.”

  “Just tell me!”

  “Honey…I shrunk the kids.”

  You did what???? YOU DID FUCKING WHAT!?!?!?!?!???!??

  Imagine the years of frustration. Imagine how much she’s already had to forgive to stay in this marriage. How many times she must have needed his help carrying in the groceries, vacuuming the stairs, weeding the flower beds, not to mention the subtler, more invisible tasks that so often fall to women—scheduling, delegating, nurturing, knowing what’s done and what needs doing. She probably tried every angle with him: asking, at first, then “joking,” scolding, begging.

  But no, don’t bother Wayne, the genius! Don’t ask anything of Wayne, the world’s foremost expert in…size science(??)! He’s busy. He’s in his fucking lab, working on his precious machine—as though Diane’s time isn’t innately as valuable as his, her energy just as precious. What about her career? What about the untapped greatness that lies inside her? What passions did she shove aside to be the caregiver for this gibbering little turkey boy?

  And for what? For WHAT??

  I’m sure they fought once in a while. I’m sure she’d lose her temper: WHY DO WE EVEN NEED A SHRINK RAY, WAYNE? Seriously, literally, what need does this fill? You’re sick, Wayne! Sick! EVERYTHING IS ALREADY THE RIGHT SIZE!

  Mostly, though, I’m sure she breathed deeply and smiled, for him, for years, because she loved him, and because she took a vow—and, hey, he forgave her for the way she tended to nag. Night after night, she lost him to the lab, the empty bed cold beside her, but this was his thing, and she loved him, and he promised her it would be “worth it.”