TRASHFUTURE - *PREVIEW* Britainology 75: Love Actually (2003)

Episode Date: December 20, 2023

For this month's first Britainology, Nate and Milo discuss the now-timeless 2003 Richard Curtis film LOVE ACTUALLY, and what it says about Britain. Milo loves it, Nate's wife loves it, Nate is lukewarm on it but it did make him laugh, and Boris Johnson Voice makes an appearance. Get the whole episode on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/britainology-75-94727172 *STREAM ALERT* Check out our Twitch stream, which airs 9-11 pm UK time every Monday and Thursday, at the following link: https://www.twitch.tv/trashfuturepodcast *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s upcoming live shows here: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)

Okay, Northern Ireland's part of the UK, but also like, oftentimes, in things I've watched in this country, when someone's like a Northern Irish character, like that's their stuff about their background that gets drawn into it. That doesn't happen. Well, I guess because Liam Neeson is so, he has such a sort of mild, but he has like his own accent. I don't know how to like, like it is, you can sort of identify it as Northern Irish, but it's so like, I don't know, it's so soft

that it's hard to characterize it as anything other than Liam Neeson voice. That's because he's not saying that we're a paving slab. You sure am a paving slab when you're here. No, but there's so many like great like Liam Neeson is in lines of this movie, my favorite being fantastic shot, classic drumming song. And I'm like, that is the most ad-coded line in the whole movie, classic drumming. So, I'm like, that is the most dad coded light in the whole movie, classic drumming. So, I respect it so much.

I respect it so much. Yeah. So, that's the plot there. And then we need to get through, just get through the characters. We talked about Sarah, Carl and Michael. There's Colin and Tony, basically, and Colin Frizzle. Colin Frizzle. Got a sex from from

Baselden the great bass Vegas basically shout sound right out is flat temporarily and takes all his money so he can go to Milwaukee Wisconsin where he immediately gets gets laid by hot and full some with three hot chicks who let's just one of them I think maybe it's at end, I can't remember where they bring their friend, but like I really, really saw their next set and it was like, I gotta tell you, that's not how people talk in Milwaukee. And I told Cynthia, I was like,

it would have been way funnier if instead of doing that sort of like basically like Northern Irish guy in London. The Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, they looking girls in the bar like they had, I'm not gonna say that they have to be like less attractive, but they just need to be more Milwaukee-looking. Like they have to be like head to toe and packers stuff and just black out drunk, but you wouldn't

know it because that's just an average Thursday night for them. People in Wisconsin... Oh, yeah. That's Minnesota or real cheesehead. Dakota is accent, but Milwaukee, well rather, Wisconsin is one of the, if not the hardest drinking part of America, like in terms of actual sort of statistical samples of alcohol consumption, like surveys and stuff, Wisconsin is like the most get blackout fucking state America.

So to me, it's probably one of the only places where due to grew up in the rendition of English drinking culture found in Baselden would actually find themselves having to go toe to toe. It's such a just unhealthy, strong, yikes. But there's no three-liter bottles of white lightening. So you're already on the back foot. The average American, if confronted with the three-liter bottle of white lightening. Yeah, I haven't really been online that much, but I purely have checked stuff and it seems like there's, you know,

transatlantic fucking food discourse happening and it's just like, man, I don't know who cares. It's the British people don't like spicy food thing again, which is constantly paraded online by man. There's no evidence for this. But also like the idea that people get weird about Americans and Mexican food and it's like, look, at the end of the day, like, Mexican food sucks in places where there aren't Mexicans, there are Mexicans in Britain. There's just not a lot of them. And Mexican food made for British people doesn't taste like Mexican food in America,

which to be fair is mostly if it's not in places that are meant for primarily Hispanic clientele, is probably adapted from the style of Mexican food that got made popular in Southern California, when catering to white people. So it's already kind of different to begin with. But yes, go figure, there's a lot more variety of Mexican and Central American

and South American food in America because we're next to them. Like, yeah. Oh, none of this was even about Mexican food. But I've seen that from Brits as well as spicy food. It's always, it's always like Americans in Mexican food be comments made by salty Brits. And Americans saying Brits don't like spicy food.

A British food is bad and basically ignoring all of the kind of like what contemporary food in this country is like British people don't like salt I don't fucking know why that is no one else is like this, but food and Britain is fine. It's good and British food like English food is good. It's just it's just it can be made badly, but so can American food Don't cast not the first stone if you unless you went to a place that didn't have fucking dog shit food for your school lunches I was in the hospital for a lot. You know this too, from your experience, fucking the hospital food in Britain, better than the hospital food in America.

I'm just gonna say, it's not good, but it's fucking so much food. It's pretty bad, so much better than the hospital food in America. So you know what, like, it's a stupid thing, but anyway, especially when you're a hospital lunch in America costs, you know, $1,000. No, but it served on the same plastic tray that you had in elementary school,

like, and that also costs $1,000, because they put it through the same as the tray that you had in elementary school. And that also cost $1,000 because they put it through the sterilizer once. Yeah, I just, so basically he goes to Milwaukee and winds up having sex and then comes back to Britain with hot chicks who immediately want to hook up with him and his friend. You're not a god of sex, Colin. You're lonely, ugly, also. It seems I don't know what the fuck it's in there for other than just kind of a gag thing, but like the fact that they go to, and the house they live in,

where the silhouettes through the window of that fucking, it literally looks like a house I would have rented a room in in college, like in terms of, they did nail the sort of shitty Midwestern house thing, which is very funny. Yeah, the awful Christmas lights. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is great.

And then there's John and Judy, the fluffers, who are their stand-ins for an adult film and they're not as stunning for a regular film. Regular film with a lot of, with a lot of really graphic sex scenes for some reason. I think, yeah, so I think based on my knowledge of the film industry, the point of them is to get the lighting right for the music. So basically they get people that they aren't the body doubles, but rather they're like the same more or less production.

And it's not a body double firm, Brad Pitt unsurprising. Yeah, fair enough. Although long story short, like they then wind up having to do all these awkward nude sex things together, simulating or otherwise. And it's day C from Gavin and stay C. And then they get in, have a relationship because they're already, you know,

he's already having to like, fondle her breasts in front of the, all the lighting and camera people and everything. Because the nipples, could you, you know, sell them some? Yeah, this is, to me once again, like this is story about about, there's the, there's 10 people or 10,

10 major characters, some of this, she's like, I don't know the fuck this in the movie. Whatever, you know what? It's a pretty interesting thing. There's a quite well-observed amount of Britishness in that with the awkwardly making small talk conversation while both being completely naked and play acting that you're having sex.

It is so laser-targeted, Brit vibes. Yeah, to me, it's a thing that plays up the kind of body jokes stuff. It kind of inverts it. Like I absolutely get where you're coming from. As regards the plot of the film, insofar as there is one, it's not really that important.

There's a bit in a British comedian William Stone who made this, like it's rather an Instagram reel really makes me laugh, but he is just like, he made this video where it's like, it's like him in a darkened room Like with a torch and he's like after years of searching the labyrinth, I finally encountered the minotaur And then it's just and then it's just him like kind of bumping into a guy going, oh, sorry, a bit of a warning here, isn't it? That's just the end of the video

Yeah, I can imagine it because it laser-charging from British vibes. Yeah, absolutely I think that was kind of like, I would say at the start, I should sort of, whereas, like something like Downton Abbey, or maybe even something like Peaky Blind, just feels like it's kind of like performing Britishness for like a non-British audience in so many ways, this feels like it's like in jokes. It's like, it's like the kind of, I don't know,

like just lays a targeted deep cut, like what life in Britain is. Yeah, and it's a little bit tweey, and it's a little bit packaged up, but I take your point that so much of what becomes popular abroad and has been popular abroad throughout the decades that I've been paying attention to. I mean, my earliest encounter with British entertainment,

sort of portrayals and stuff was like watching Black Outer on fucking P.A.L. cassettes when I was like seven years old, you know, over 30 years ago. So, like, I think so much of what gets done for export this popular abroad is not just like you said, like that sort of stylized rendition, but it's always historical period pieces. It's always, you know, like merchandise films or Jane Austen novels made into films or, you know, films about, I don't know, fucking Admiral Nelson, you know,

or Shakespearean stuff, shit like Braveheart, like just all these things that get made, even if they're made by Americans, like the British culture stuff is always historical, it's always, I mean, I'm just trying to think about British movies that are about contemporary British life that are popular abroad Particularly in America and this is one I mean aside from like the huge the Richard Curtis, you know Hugh Grant movies in the 90s like this is Early 2000s might as well of B1

Basically other than the other permutations of this same film by the same guy with most of the same actors There's aren't that many that I can think of. And I might be wrong, but I'm just laughing because I'm like, children of men. Not really. Children are doing a very different, but also very accurate side. Yeah, and then feature features at least one of that. I mean, should we tell you Geofor is in there as well?

I mean, another line from this film that I say all the time. I, it's a little like David. The whole scene where like the Prime Minister fucking turns up at Martin McCutchens house and opens the door to her entire family like kind of stood on the staircase and how it comes down says game. Where the fuck is my fucking co. Yeah. And then we're like our Prime Minister like this is such a perfect encapsulation of like cockney household how they would react to the Prime Minister. I got to be honest with you. I wouldn't have gotten that before, but now having lived in this, in this country for over

five years, a hundred percent. Yeah, there's certain things about it that I'm like, oh, yeah, no, that's that's, that's completely accurate. That's the way that the dad is kind of like calling him, sir, and attempting to sort of project an air of decor. But then the mum is just fully being like, well, the plane, I, is a little ex-David. The octopus costumes, I can wait. You know that. Just expecting that everyone has that one auntie

who would fully expect the Prime Minister to take the octopus costume she has made very seriously. Like that 100%.