Love Actually: the breakaway hit of the 2003 holiday season. It's a romantic comedy of star-studded proportions, overflowing with celebrity cameos, awkward humping, and the origin story of the most ruthless Ricktatorship the world has ever known. Some say it’s the best Christmas movie ever made.

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Eh, no, actually, no one has ever said that. Yet, every Christmas, TV stations ram its incessant British “charm” down our throats.

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There are many reasons that Love Actually has carved out such an indelible place in our hearts. I've no clue what they are, but otherwise, we wouldn’t get our skulls bashed in by its insufferable schmaltz year after year… after year.

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So, if forced to endure it, one should find a means to enjoy it. It’s like those jello molds grandma served at Thanksgiving; you can see inside, and it’s nothing good, so you take a bite out of obligation and force the mind-body connection to go, “Mmmm… jello.”

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Unfortunately, Love Actually doesn’t even afford our taste buds the decency of being the cinematic equivalent of orange jello; it’s more like strawberry banana, so even the sugary satisfaction gets muted by this particular undertaking: ranking every storyline in the movie by its problematic… ness.

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Everyone points to Andrew Lincoln standing outside Keira Knightley’s flat holding cards and confessing his undying affection for his best friend's wife, but good golly, Ms. Molly, that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

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Now, to nail down this list, it was crucial to settle on a definition of “problematic.” It’d be no fun using the modern definition: anything that can mildly offend the sensibilities of anyone.

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The perfect blend of problematic nonsense contains three essential elements: immorality, illogicality, and flawed resolution.

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So, without further adieu, the storylines of Love Actually ranked by how problematic they are.

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9. Billy Mack and Joe (Billy Nighy and Gregor Fisher)

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The only real issue one could take with this is that the has-been rocker Billy Mack’s bid for the Christmas number one is a cover of Wet Wet Wet’s “Love is All Around,” which was itself a cover and nearly sent the entire United Kingdom to an insane asylum in the summer of 1994.

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Yet, that plays into the story: Mack is forward about how contrived and ludicrous the song is, simply replacing the word “Love” with “Christmas” and hoping for a hit record. Nighy’s commitment to the role makes Mack feel like a perfect Surreal Life candidate. The ultimate conclusion, where a heterosexual male embraces his platonic love for his longtime manager, is touching. It was progressive for 2003 and is by far the most restrained, authentic story Love Actually tells (although, considering Mack strips to his birthday suit on live television with only a guitar to shield his nethers, that isn’t saying much).

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8. John and Judy (Martin Freeman and Joanna Page)

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Nothing off here, just two naked stand-ins bonding while they fake-frack each other’s brains out. It’s a pleasant reminder that there’s someone out there for everyone, and you never quite know just how you’ll meet that special someone.

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Sure, it’s nice to have a meet-cute at a neighborhood bakery or go to the ER with poison ivy up your butt, but seeing as how few people would prefer scones to sex, there are far better things to have up your butt, and we all immediately imagine what someone we’re attracted to looks like without all those pesky clothes on, it’s nice that John and Judy get to cut right to the chase. Both are inoffensive characters, which is the point considering the circumstances of their coming together (ha ha… ha), so all in all, this is one of the good ones.

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7. Sarah, Karl, and Michael (Laura Linney, Rodrigo Santoro, and Michael Fitzgerald)

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Why is Karl into Sarah? Laura Linney is an acting goddess, and she’s certainly not ugly, but Sarah is as dry as overcooked chicken. We can understand how someone like that would get entranced by Karl, Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome (even if he's also a charisma black hole), but the fact she’s pined over him for years to the extent her boss demands she alleviate the awkwardness and bare her soul is a tad silly.

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No way two people in an office would go this long without someone saying something, and the fact she confesses to being set on him from the literal moment they met makes her seem like a besotted schoolgirl. One could argue the extreme duress her mentally ill brother places upon her has made her a bit more of a desperate romantic, but it’s a stretch. If not for the ode to how all-consuming troubled family members can be, this would be a significantly more irksome storyline.

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6. Harry, Karen, and Mia (Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, and Heike Makatsch)

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Most would place this solidly in the top three, what with a man cheating on Emma Thompson for someone pretty basic.

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Alas, this is as close to romantic realism as the movie gets. Although Alan Rickman doesn’t sell us on Harry being a mid-life crisis horndog that would betray his wife, and Mia is far from the ravishable seductress she believes herself to be, we must abide by the adage: clichés are clichés for a reason. How many times has the aging boss surrendered to the “bombshell” secretary and disavowed his poor wife for a cheap thrill?

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Karen’s silent heartbreak as she retreats to the master bedroom and contemplates the probable end of her marriage is a scene for the ages. It’s the only time the film might make you feel something and not seem completely contrived, and we must applaud it for that. If not for how inexplicable Harry’s near-hit with implosion is aside from the broad idea of it, this would be lower.

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5. Jamie and Aurélia (Colin Firth and Lúcia Moniz)

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Jamie, having uncovered that his brother has been nailing his wife (and likely has a larger endowment), hides out in another country. Fine.

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Aurélia is… there. Fine.

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The two of them, without the ability to communicate, falling in love? Absolutely fucking not.

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For the most die-hard romantics, it’s adorable and endearing, but for anyone with an ounce of realism coursing through their veins, this is insufferable. Every scene between them just happens to have them reacting to situations with a constant stream of meet-cute ridiculousness, but guess what?

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IT DOESN’T MATTER!

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You can’t fall for someone when you don't know what they’re saying. You might as well fall in love with a broom or a lamp, which these two are the personality equivalents of anyway. By the time Jamie returns to France to ask Aurelia to move across the world with no job prospects, practically zero grasp of English, no friends or family to rely on, and marry him, the eyes have rolled so far into the back of one’s head that it’d take invasive surgery to reposition them.

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4. Daniel, Sam, Joanna, and Carol (Liam Neeson, Thomas Sangster, Olivia Olson, and Claudia Schiffer)

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On paper, there’s nothing offensive here, aside from how on-the-nose the film becomes in materializing the Claudia Schiffer joke by having the supermodel play the 11th-hour love interest of Liam Neeson’s widower, Daniel.

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Unfortunately, while the idea of a recently widowed man helping his young stepson navigate his first love is fine, it doesn't play out that way. Instead of simply telling his son to be brave, vocalize his feelings, and hope for the best, the two concoct a ludicrous plan to misrepresent the child entirely, culminating in inciting him to commit numerous felonies by violating airport security measures. Can you imagine what this girl would think if this happened in real life? Some kid darting through the airport to profess his undying love when they’ve never spoken?

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Then, the worst part, when she delays hundreds of people to give him a peck on the cheek.​​ The horrendously off-key cover of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” was bad enough, but you can’t delay people’s travel plans for a kiss. She's a monster.

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So, we have a kid creeping on a girl in his school’s play, the stepfather who encourages a cockamamie plan with zero realistic chance of working, eggs on the kid to become a criminal, and winds up with a woman who looks like the supermodel his dead wife joked he should bring to the funeral, and it’s far from the worst.

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Yeah, this movie’s rough.

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3. Colin, Tony, and the American Girls (Kris Marshall, Abdul Sales, Denise Richards, Shannon Elizabeth, Elisha Cuthbert, January Jones, and Ivana Miličević)

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For many, this would justly be number one. After all, we’re in a post #MeToo world, so horny men devising schemes to rope women into bed is not kosher.

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It doesn’t help that all the American girls bug-eyed horndog Colin meets instantly ache to spread their legs for him and at no point care about personality, physical attraction, depth, substance, or mutual respect.

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It also doesn’t help that the film cast resident early 2000s sex pots (and Hollywood’s “These women’s only value is sex appeal” go-tos) Shannon Elizabeth, Denise Richards, and Elisha Cuthbert as three of the bombshells Colin ropes in during his American escapades without even the most meager attempt at winking to the camera. It could’ve felt like a forward upending of our perceptions, but instead seems like typical 2000s misogyny, where treating women like sex objects was all the rage and widely accepted.

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It’s not that trying to get laid is a crime, but there is something difficult to stomach in watching such a blatant sleazebag get rewarded for his sexual shenanigans the millisecond he steps foot in the States.

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2. Mark, Juliet, and Peter (Andrew Lincoln, Keira Knightley, and Chiwetel Ejiofor)

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Many lament that “the heart wants what it wants,” but there are lines you don’t cross, even if only internally. If Mark was a true friend, his best friend’s fiancee wouldn’t be an emotional option.

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But not only is she an option, Mark accepts the videographer job for the wedding, uses a camcorder, and films everything as a close-up of Juliet.

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Was this accidental?

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Well, considering he lies about the video getting filmed over so he can keep it in his living room (with lotion and tissues nearby, no doubt), it's safe to say, no, it was not.

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When Juliet realizes the depth of his “affections,” he leaves his apartment and concocts a plan.

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The plan?

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Show up to your best friend’s flat and hope his wife answers the door so you can silently express your love for her using cards that basically say, “Hey, hopefully I’ll be nailing Kate Moss soon, but even if I am, I’ll still be madly in love with you… my best friend’s wife. Oh, and I still have that video of you at your wedding where I got extreme close-ups of you and absolutely nothing else.”

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This is noble? Mark falls for his best friend’s partner, but because he says nothing and creeps from afar, it’s cool?

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No.

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Of course, the ending note isn’t much better, where this woman bolts from her door, gives her husband’s best friend a PITY KISS, and runs back inside, the husband none the wiser.

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Let's review:

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1. Loving your best friend’s partner.

2. Ruining their wedding video by only getting close-ups of the bride.

3. Using a camcorder to record your best friend’s wedding.

4. Using a CAMCORDER. TO RECORD. YOUR. BEST. FRIEND’S. WEDDING.

5. Lying about filming over the video to keep it for yourself and violate yourself to the images.

6. Taking such a ludicrous risk that could’ve torpedoed your friendship with your bestie and potentially his marriage.

7. Kissing another man, under any circumstances, for ANY reason, who isn’t your husband, ESPECIALLY his BEST FRIEND.

8. A CAMCORDER!!!

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1. David and Natalie (Hugh Grant and Martine McCutcheon)

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While the UK electing a bachelor Prime Minister isn’t unprecedented, by the time Love Actually got released, it’d been over thirty years. No one would accuse Edward Heath of being a charmer, but do we really believe some bumbling, unmarried nitwit got elected to the highest office in the land?

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Once he moves in, he immediately develops an inappropriate attraction to his subordinate (which he makes zero effort to hide) until he basically fires her to curb his desires.

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Meanwhile, POTUS visits Downing Street and puts the UK in its place, morphing a “special relationship” into one more resembling that of a bullying big brother pounding on the younger.

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The PM’s response? Publicly chastise the US’ conduct, humiliating the Commander in Chief and shattering diplomatic relations with his nation’s strongest ally.

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David’s newfound confidence, which definitely made the entire nation the target of international ridicule, sees him somehow incapable of finding Natalie’s address but very capable of disrupting her entire neighborhood’s holiday in his quest to locate her. Once he does, he lets his sister believe he’s a decent uncle who came to support his niece and nephew and not to get laid, and the two upstage an entire children’s school Christmas play by frenching before the audience, which will surely be great for public relations.

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There's still the chance for a touching conclusion, which the pair gets quite literally when Natalie leaps into David's arms after he deboards his commercial flight and he grabs her ass in front of the paparazzi. How charming.

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So, in review:

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Bachelor PM who can barely form a sentence gets the hots for his employee, transfers her so he doesn’t shit where he eats, then ruins his entire country’s relationship with the most powerful nation on earth before banging on people’s doors on a holiday so he can profess his love to said employee, then proves he’s a horrible uncle before frenching his assistant in front of multiple local schools.

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You can’t get more problematic than a squirrelly politician, so anyone who contests this ruling is objectively wrong, because in this case, he most certainly did have sexual relations with that woman.

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It’s been 20 years: it’s time we accept that Love Actually sucks. On a scale of Jenna Jameson to Lorena Bobbitt on prop night, it’s two lubricated pine cones and that VHS you didn’t realize was of your parents bumping uglies until it was far, far too late.

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I petition the world to burn every copy, shut down every streaming service that hosts it, and cut off any in your lives who enjoy it, even ironically. It’s problematic, and we have no room for such nonsense in the modern world.