Did Love Actually (2003) Ruin the Theatrical Model For Christmas Movies?

Hello, reader! This’ll be our last normal issue of the year before the annual recap next Friday. But before we dive in, my editor John Hammontree would like you to know that he’ll be on the Sleep in Cinema radio show this Saturday with the legendary John Archibald to discuss A Muppet Christmas Carol! Which, if you’ll recall, he wrote about last year for this very newsletter. Tune in via the Substrate Radio website or app tomorrow morning at 9:00 to hear their cheerful conversation! Okay, now for something much more serious.

I don’t hear too much about the “War on Christmas” these days. Maybe there was a winner declared and I simply didn’t get the memo. Or maybe the battle is still raging on Twitter, where I’ve been spending less time than ever.

I’ll tell you what, though. There sure is a war on Christmas movies going on. The theatrically released Christmas film seems to be a dying breed—if they’re not dead already.

Just look at the theatrical numbers from last weekend, the third weekend in December. Unless Wonka is secretly a Christmas tale, the highest grossing holiday film of any kind over the weekend was…Silent Night, John Woo’s welcome but rather unceremonious return to the American box office, which came in at…12. Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving, which is still doing decent business, landed at 16. And The Holdovers, a terrific indie dramedy set at the holidays, is still hanging around at 18 after peaking early.

None of those films are setting the box office on fire, as you can see. Silent Night has earned a modest $10 million worldwide after three weeks. The Holdovers has done decent business for a film its size, currently sitting at just under $18 million worldwide. And while Thanksgiving has been a minor hit for Sony, nearly tripling its reported $15 million budget, it’s…well, not a Christmas movie.

It should also be noted that none of these films are family-friendly. And that can partially explain the audience response—but not fully. Because 20 years ago this season, the world was introduced to Love, Actually, which might be the last Christmas movie to truly enter the seasonal canon.*

Let’s get one thing out of the way first: Elf, also released in 2003, was a pretty big hit, pulling in $173M in the U.S. on its first run. And it’s become a beloved holiday classic that people from all walks of life revisit time and time again. (It’s been logged more than 900,000 times on Letterboxd, which is rarified air.) But Elf was released a week before Love Actually in the U.S. and multiple weeks earlier overseas.** So, while I think they are both squarely in the Christmas movie canon, I chose to investigate the one that arrived (slightly) later.

Since 2003, there have been a handful of Christmas movie hits. The Grinch set the box office on fire in 2018, pulling in half a billion worldwide and more than $270 million stateside. If 2019’s Little Women counts (and who am I to say it doesn’t?), its $108 million run in the U.S. is pretty good, but its Letterboxd presence (1.6 million logs) is great. And several others have done decent business and made a lasting impression for some. But according to my imperfect research, only one other Christmas movie has surpassed $100 million at the U.S. box office in the last decade, and it made such a diminishing mark that I forgot it even existed.***

It’s gotten even worse since the pandemic, even if you throw out 2020 when multiplexes were all ghost towns. Do you know what the biggest theatrical holiday movie was last year? It was Violent Night, an R-rated action film that only grossed $50M in the U.S. and will probably be forgotten by most in due time. 2021 was even worse, as the only Christmas thing to make even a small box office dent was Christmas with The Chosen: The Messenger, which appears to be an episode or two of a popular TV series with some musical performances tacked on at the end? I don’t know, folks. It’s bleak out there.

And this is all just the measurable statistics, which don’t truly indicate a film’s staying power. Still, I don’t think any holiday film since the 2003 slate has reached that same level of impact.**** So what happened to the Christmas classics we used to get every few years, or even twice in one year? The ones that couples and families and movie nerds alike enjoy and revisit when December rolls around?

Sure, studios aren’t making broad comedies or romantic comedies like they used to, and those are two genres that Christmas films often lean into. But the bigger, more obvious culprits seem to be the Hallmark Channel, Lifetime, and other networks that programmed Americans to think “Why go out when we’ve got Christmas movies at home?” every year since streaming “content” entered our lives.

And if those culprits really are to blame, I think Love Actually paved the way for their takeover.*****

Folks, I hadn’t actually seen this film until earlier this month. (I know, I know.) But with fresh eyes and an open mind, I am here to tell you that this is, in many ways, the proto-Hallmark Christmas movie. And not just because of what I consider to be certain failings from a craft standpoint but because of the goals that the filmmakers aimed for.******

There’s hardly anything cinematic about Love Actually. Partially because of the way it’s directed and edited, but largely because we’re presented with so many characters and so many interweaving storylines that everything remains on the surface level. Some characters have happy endings, some characters have sad endings, and some are left in a weird gray area. But without borrowing from the film’s narration itself, the theme of Love Actually seems to be little more than “love is good,” or perhaps “love is worth the effort” if we’re being generous.

And when it comes to the holiday season, sometimes that’s all people want, right? A few laughs, a few smiles, a few reminders that there is good in the world even when times are tough. And from the handful of examples I’ve seen, that seems to be the distillation of the Hallmark ethos. These films are created to be temporary pleasures, not memorable stories. The essence of “content” as opposed to “cinema.”

And while that’s disappointing in many ways to a film lover like me, I’m not opposed to watching them—or even revisiting Love Actually itself in the future. These films serve a purpose, even if it’s a fleeting one. Yes, it’s sad that the theatrical Christmas movie is on life support, save for the occasional outlier. But if you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling you’ll find that content actually is all around.

*The Polar Express was released in 2004, but I refuse to recognize it, because the animation is very bad and kinda scary. I also refuse to believe that adults—other than maybe Arkansas football players—watch it on purpose without being forced into it by their children.

**Love Actually hit U.K. theaters one week after its U.S. release, which seems odd to me, even if you consider the weird 9/11 thing. Also worth noting: Love Actually outgrossed Elf at the worldwide box office by nearly $25 million despite Elf winning by more than $100 million at home.

***It was Daddy’s Home 2 in 2017. Did you know they made two Daddy’s Home films? Will Ferrell is the new Father Christmas.

****More evidence from Letterboxd: Love Actually and Elf cracked the top 10 in their “Most Obsessively Rewatched Films at Christmas” list. No other film in the top 20 was released after 2004. (And again, we do not acknowledge The Polar Express in this house.)

*****It took me almost 750 words to finally get to my thesis. My editor John is gonna be so disappointed.

******I won’t dump on this film too much, because I really didn’t hate it. And I don’t like to talk trash in the newsletter. Especially at Christmas!

Love Actually is now streaming on Netflix and AMC+, and it is available to rent elsewhere.