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If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around.

This week, Emily brings her deep thoughts about the first of two Christmas movies the Guy Girls will be covering for the 2025 holiday season: Richard Curtis's 2003 romcom Love, Actually.

While both sisters thoroughly enjoyed the 10 interlocking stories of romance, parental love, heartbreak, dubious comedy, and even dubiouser feminism when the film debuted, Curtis's storytelling style hasn't exactly aged well. Not only does Love, Actually lean into the ubiquitous early 2000s culture of fat shaming despite Curtis trying write pointed cultural commentary about how ridiculous that was through the story of Martine McCutcheon's character Natalie, but the women in the movie are consistently treated as objects and prizes to be won, rather than fully formed people. But as Tracie argues, if Curtis believes in True Love, which can happen At First Sight (with the capitalization of those romantic ideals implied), then of course he paints himself into the corner of love based on physical attraction, which means young, slender, beautiful women--and it something we see repeatedly in his movies.

There are still plenty of laughs and poignant moments in this film, so no shade on anyone who puts this in their rotation of Christmas movies to revisit each year. But it definitely works as a time capsule for where we were in 2003.

If Christmas is all around you, put in your earbuds to get it out of your head for once!

Mentioned in this episode:

https://www.jezebel.com/i-rewatched-love-actually-and-am-here-to-ruin-it-for-al-

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We are the sister podcasters Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our extended family as the Guy Girls.

We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love 80s and 90s movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, analyzing film tropes with a side of feminism, and examining the pop culture of our Gen X childhood for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, religious allegory, and whatever else we find.

We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com. For our work together, visit guygirlsmedia.com

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