New Heights/Wondery
Jason Kelce expertly expressed what many tortured boyfriends and fiancees and husbands have wondered over the years: Why are our significant other obsessed with Love Actually? And furthermore, what on earth does this movie have to do with Christmas?
On the Christmas Eve episode of their uber-popular New Heights podcast, the Brothers Kelce, alongside Jason’s wife Kylie — who has become a successful media personality in her own right, as her newly launched pod actually overtook Joe Rogan’s as the most popular in the country — reviewed Love Actually, the 2003 British holiday rom-com.
Jason Kelce, as he’s been known to do, came out firing as he declared that Love Actually is perhaps the worst Christmas movie he’s ever seen.
“Love Actually might be the worst Christmas movie I’ve ever seen. I don’t even know that it’s up for debate,” Kelce began.
“These people fall in love with each other without being able to talk. What the f— are we talking about? It was terribly unbelievable. … I prefer more of the Shakespearean love where they actually communicate and there’s some romantic interaction… And then also, the overall sentiment and lessons and overall values that it expounds are absolutely horrendous,” he continued.
While Travis was less critical of the film, he, too, admitted that he’s unsure what it actually has to do with Christmas.
“I didn’t feel Christmas at all during the movie. I enjoyed the movie, I just didn’t understand how much it really tied into Christmas,” Travis added about the film that his girlfriend Taylor Swift once declared as her favorite of all time.
The video is queued up to begin when the trio start discussing Love Actually, but if you just want to see Jason’s scathing review, that starts at 8:58.
“Pretty sure we nailed this Christmas Eve episode of New Heights Film Club. It was ridiculously fun to give an honest assessment of Love Actually and do this blind ranking TikTok thingy,” the elder Kelce said on social media to promote the episode.
Pretty sure we nailed this Christmas Eve episode of New Heights Film Club. It was ridiculously fun to give an honest assessment of Love Actually and do this blind ranking tik tok thingy. https://t.co/Qj50WhXBrK
— Jason Kelce (@JasonKelce) December 24, 2024
Released in 2003, Love Actually starred Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Keira Knightley, Emma Thompson, Laura Linney, Alan Rickman, Andrew Lincoln, and Bill Nighy, and has since become a modern classic Christmas film.
The “cards on doorstep” scene from Love Actually has become particularly totemic as it’s become one of those pop culture references that people can understand without having seen the movie.