Everyone has their favorite Christmas movies, even if too many people call something a Christmas movie just because it takes place in late December.
“Die Hard” and “Die Hard 2” take place at Christmas, but neither one is about Christmas. Pretty much the same with “Home Alone.”
And so many of the more recent ones seem to take a cynical look at the holiday season. One that straddles the line between good and bad — sometimes one, sometimes the other — is “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.” I think the problem is Chevy Chase, at least for me.
It’s not like I don’t appreciate good cynicism. “Bad Santa” is near the top of my list of holiday favorites, and while “Family Man” is cynical only in spots, I like it a lot too.
But “Love Actually” is without question my favorite Christmas movie, so much so that it might be at the top of my list as an overall favorite. It tells seven different love stories, representing different types of love. The sweetest stories are the ones of Jamie and Aurelia and that of Sam and Joanna, and they’re the two that intertwined, wrap up the movie.
It’s interesting that the movie both begins and ends at the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport, where nearly all the sights are of people deplaning and meeting up with people who love them.
The entire story is of the month or so leading up to Christmas, and the closest thing to a villain in the movie is Billy Bob Thornton’s portrayal of an American president who is a cross between Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Thankfully, the 2003 film is set half a generation before Donald Trump was president.
More than any other holiday, Christmas is about love … and family.
To my mind, at least, “Love Actually” does a wonderful job of portraying that.