“Enough…Enough Now”

What’s the most unrealistic thing to happen in a holiday movie?

• Home Alone – The amount of standing water in Jack Murphy’s basement from running faucets.
• Die Hard – Tape strong enough to secure a gun to John McClane’s back, yet so easy to remove that he could shoot both Eddie and Hans in quick succession.
• A Christmas Story – How no one thought to get a cup of warm water to unstick the kid’s tongue.
• Elf – Walter having the necessary tools in his swanky NYC apartment for Buddy to build a legitimate rocking horse.
• Home Alone 2 – All that room service and only a $967.43 bill
• Scrooged – The fact that its fictitious movie within the movie, The Night the Reindeer Died, kind of predicted future Christmas movies, Fat Man and Violent Night.
• Christmas with the Kranks – That it somehow got made.

All of these are legitimate choices, but they are all wrong.

Love Actually contains the most ridiculous scene in Christmas movie history.

Love Actually is a holiday epic with several storylines intertwining throughout its 2 hour and 9 minute runtime. I won’t provide too much context, because if you haven’t seen it by now, shame on you.

Side note, the Jamie and Auréliae plot is the best. Anyone who says otherwise is wrong.

But, it’s the Juliet (Keira Knightley) and Mark (Andrew Lincoln) storyline that wins the prize for most ridiculous.

Juliet has just married Mark’s best friend, Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Mark has always been distant to Juliet, so distant in fact that Juliet believes that Mark doesn’t like her. Once Juliet gets a hold of Mark’s wedding video footage, she discovers quite the opposite. Mark is in love with Juliet.

In the scene above, we see Mark come to Juliet and Peter’s place to make peace with a love that he knows can never be returned (or at least that is what the audience is made to believe). Not only does Juliet laugh at all Mark’s corny cue card jokes, she looks longingly at him when she sees the cards about her being perfect and him being in love with her. Those aren’t pity looks. Believe me, I’ve been looked at with pity by many girls, and that is not the vibe Juliet is giving off.

Then, as he walks away, she chases after him and kisses him on the mouth! Not the cheek. Not the forehead. And, she’s holding his face while she does it. Face holding during kissing is a sign of pure passion. Or, it happens when you double cross your brother, who is eventually going to kill you for it (first Godfather II reference).

Obvious chemistry through his bogus carolers skit culminating with a kiss, and what does Mark do? He walks away and mutters to himself, “Enough…Enough now.” Like we’re supposed to believe that all he needed to get Juliet out of his head and heart was to tell her that he loved her, and then he could move on. Maybe that was his initial plan. But, as soon as she started showing signs of reciprocating that love, Mark would have been plotting ways to kill his best friend on a small fishing boat (second Godfather II reference…bang biscuit!).

There it is. The most ridiculous scene in holiday movie history. Or, maybe it is Peter not being able to distinguish between a 2003 boombox and actual carol singers.