12 Alternative Movies We're Sick Of Hearing Are Set At Christmas

4. Love Actually

Admittedly the people in charge of scheduling seem to forget that Love Actually is not actually a Christmas movie: it seems to have been trotted out at Christmas every year since it was released and probably will do so until the eventual fall of civilisation, possibly after. But Love Actually is not about Christmas, it's about relationships with Christmas as a catalyst for bringing people together. The strength of Love Actually is that it's not just about romance but the relationships between a widower and his stepson, a rockstar and his long-suffering agent and a woman and her mentally ill brother. There are of course romantic relationships too, but these are never framed by the narrative as more important. One of the main things that Love Actually does really right is that some problems don't have easy fixes: it's uncertain whether Emma Thompson's character's marriage will ever recover from her husband's infidelity and it's unlikely Sarah will find it easy to date while on call for her brother 24/7. And of course this makes the Prime Minister kissing his tea lady on stage, or the little boy doing the chasing-your-beloved-through-the-airport scene which I'm fairly sure is a legal requirement for romantic comedies these days, or Colin Firth learning enough Portuguese to propose to a woman he's never had a real conversation with all the more wonderful in contrast.