This is a brilliant new instalment in Nicola Upson’s ‘Golden Age’ crime series featuring Josephine Tey as detective. It’s a genius idea to have an actual crime writer as a detective, something that Upson has sustained beautifully over 11 books – ‘Shot with Crimson’ being the latest.
I’ve followed this series from the start and was delighted to be granted a copy of ‘Shot with Crimson’ for review by NetGalley. As always, opinions are entirely my own.
Welcome to my stop on the tour for Gary Raymond’s hilarious book, ‘How Love Actually Ruined Christmas (or Colourful Narcotics)’.
This is a blog tour organised by Emma at Damp Pebbles and I’m grateful to her, Gary Raymond and Parthian Books for the chance to be involved in the tour and for my free copy of the book for review.
From the Publisher:
RARELY HAS THE POWER OF CINEMA BEEN FELT BY SO MANY, IN SUCH OPPOSING WAYS…
“Love Actually dulls the critical senses, making those susceptible to its hallucinogenic powers think they’ve seen a funny, warm-hearted, romantic film about the many complex manifestations of love. Colourful Narcotics. A perfect description of a bafflingly popular film.”
By any reasonable measurement, Love Actually is a bad movie. There are plenty of bad movies out there, but what gets under Gary Raymond’s skin here is that it seems to have tricked so many people into thinking it’s a good movie. In this hilarious, scene-by-scene analysis of the Christmas monolith that is Love Actually, Gary Raymond takes us through a suffocating quagmire of badly drawn characters, nonsensical plotlines, and open bigotry, to a climax of ill-conceived schmaltz.
How Love Actually Ruined Christmas (or Colourful Narcotics) is the definitive case against a terrible movie. With a foreword by Lisa Smithstead.
My Review:
Surely everyone likes ‘Love Actually’, the 2003 Richard Curtis comedy?
Who could not enjoy the sight of Hugh Grant (as the Prime Minister) sashaying around Number 10 Downing Street to a Girls Aloud tune? Who doesn’t love a film packed with national treasures – Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Bill Nighy (to name just a few)? Who could fail to have their heart warmed by the various entwined stories of love in the build-up to a gloriously perfect Christmas?
Gary Raymond, it turns out. And me.
I’ve never really liked this film. While I really enjoyed ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ and ‘Notting Hill’, this one didn’t hit the spot for me. Given that I saw it on my honeymoon in a packed cinema in Florida – an idealised slice of Britishness being serves for an applauding American audience and a young honeymooning couple – that takes some saying. It should have been a winner. I never even knew clapping at a movie was a thing, but I’ve never felt further from applause.
While I was absolutely on board for Hugh Grant’s shimmying and I can’t wholly condemn anything either Colin Firth or Emma Thompson are in, I just couldn’t get my head round what I’d seen. It was altogether TOO MUCH – too many stories, too much sentimentalism (even for a Curtis film), too many awful characters, too much wasting of the impressive cast list, too much sadness in something marketed as jolly…I could go on forever.
This book brilliantly explores all the reasons I had for not loving the film and a whole lot I hadn’t even thought of (as I have deliberately avoided too much repeated exposure to this movie!) Gary Raymond has clearly spent a long time watching and thinking about this film and this book is the outcome – a gloriously funny and (I think) fantastically accurate diatribe.
The book takes us through the whole film, scene-by-scene. Here, laid bare, is the entire movie in all its horrific wonder. I’d actually forgotten some of the strands of the narrative which is absolutely understandable – as I’d thought, there are just too many and some are pretty pointless.
Raymond perfectly skewers each scene with wit and razor-sharp observation. Yes, Liam Neeson’s character seems like a wildly inappropriate parent figure. Yes, Emma Thompson proves to be the worst friend ever. Yes, Kris Marshall’s character is essentially a deluded sex pest. And yes – the romance strand with the 11 year-old child feels horribly inappropriate and weird. And what on earth is going on with the timeline?!
That’s not to say this book is all ‘bah, humbug’! In fact, it is the opposite. Raymond has no beef with Christmas or love or any of the people involved with the film, but merely points out that its messages are a bit off-beam. He is right – Christmas isn’t celebrated for being a festival of truth (‘What lovely novelty socks, Auntie Jean! How did you know what I wanted?’) and this film has some iffy ideas on class and gender too.
The strength of the book is the humour. There were many points where I laughed out loud, either at Raymond’s descriptions of the cast grappling with weird scenarios and terrible dialogue or the analysis of these. The description of Mia’s attempt at a seductive pose for Alan Rickman’s character (and his subsequent response) is worth the price of the book alone! The detail with which Raymond takes apart these scenes is to be commended – it is forensic and obsessive, but also hilarious.
I really cannot recommend this book highly enough – it is a light, humorous read that does have some serious messages in there under all the funny bits. As someone who feels very similar to Raymond about ‘Love Actually’, I was extremely receptive to his arguments. However, I think even lovers of the film (who perhaps know it better than me) would find something fun and interesting in this book – it is a well-argued and witty take that I think most people could appreciate.
As a postscript, I also love the fact that Raymond wanted to call the book ‘Colourful Narcotics’. It’s all explained within the pages, but I think it is absolutely spot-on as a description!
About the Author:
Gary Raymond is a novelist, critic, editor, and broadcaster. He is presenter of The Review Show for BBC Radio Wales and editor of Wales Arts Review. He is a regular writer on film, music, literature, and theatre, and can often be heard on BBC Radio 3 and 4 as an arts commentator and reviewer. His novels include For Those Who Come After (Parthian, 2015), The Golden Orphans (Parthian, 2018), and the upcoming Angels of Cairo (Parthian, 2021).
