Xenia’s lethal leg squeeze, overt sexual performance, Russian villains and Joe Don Baker’s later-career presence age best; his prior Bond role and Felix’s injury prompt uncertain recollections.
Organic product placement, Minnie Driver’s cameo and the poster are aged-best choices.
Brosnan’s balanced Bond is praised through NBA-center analogies; future Bond casting and Dua Lipa involvement remain speculation, with Elba, Kaluuya and Patel alternatives discussed.
Brosnan’s fit is contrasted with Hugh Grant; Liam Neeson is imagined as a tougher alternative. An oldest-Bond claim is also made, without independent verification.
Elaborate villain speeches instead of simply killing Bond are enjoyed despite implausibility, with the pen scene criticized; Bond’s post-explosion victory lap is admired.
Grant is emphatically affirmed for the performance, success, recovery from scandal and foundation of his subsequent romcom run. — Juliet Litman
Roberts is rejected in favor of My Best Friend’s Wedding’s comeback achievement, despite preferring Notting Hill as a film. — Amanda Dobbins
Curtis initially receives an affirmative argument, but the final answer favors Love Actually’s commercial and career impact despite reservations about its emotional depth and gender politics. — Amanda Dobbins
Ifans is probably at his peak but is judged insufficiently prominent to qualify fully. — Amanda Dobbins
Val Kilmer is proposed as Robin for greater accent commitment, with objections that his striking looks and method approach might be excessive.
Hugh Grant is proposed for Robin's privileged arrogance and ability to face Rickman, but the group doubts the movie would have been a comparable hit without Costner's star power.
Jason Segel is nominated for the Miles role and wins over a skeptic on the strength of his Dracula puppet opera; Emilia Clarke, Daenerys Targaryen, would be fantastic as Iris.
Kate Hudson could have been Cameron Diaz, contemporaneously accurate with the L.A.-ness and rom-com chops and maybe better at the sappiness, though that would mean McConaughey in Jude Law's job, which needs a British accent; Wedding Planner McConaughey is still loved.
Eddie Redmayne is rejected as not hot enough and too direct; Colin Firth could do it with Hugh Grant-style aloofness, having done the messed-up Love Actually plot where he is helpless and says I love you; but nobody is as hot, and the movie does not work without Jude Law, who brings it all together.
While still on casting, one host had an idea to recast Jack Black: Matt Dillon, good looking, slightly older and funny in Something About Mary and Beautiful Girls, though always a jerk and not plausibly musical; or Jason Segel, who sings, likes to be dramatic, and whose Knocked Up and Sarah Marshall characters would fit the movie.
Homeexchange.com is the first item: living in someone else's home on a whim was not mainstream in 2006, maybe a two-week rental, but it has been totally validated by the last five years and is as seamless now as the movie made it look, with the show-up-and-see-what-you-find thrill or the wish you had picked a hotel.
Los Angeles at Christmas is truly underrated and the movie did it justice: quiet with no traffic, a coat at night and warm sun by day, Christmas music playing; the drive onto Sunset off the PCH with no cars is saved as a nitpick.
Celebrating the art of movie trailers has aged well: in 2006 trailers were still corny voiceover work, but the film knew they mattered, the Ringer now runs a trailer bracket, Cameron Diaz's 'that's why they pay me the big bucks' moment with the Lindsay Lohan trailer shows the cynical side, and 'now it looks like a hit' with Katherine Hahn and John Krasinski shows the movie invested in the changing landscape.
The Hans Zimmer score is very lovely and the soundtrack, with the White Stripes for the bed dance, James Taylor's Merry Little Christmas, the Phil Spector Christmas album and a 'Neretha Franklin' (as transcribed) cover of You Send Me, cues every song perfectly; Zoe, picked up from the train, recognized the music in the car, and it conveys a feeling that is very Nancy Meyers.
Jude Law's handsomeness is timeless, as is how he dresses, the hot tweedy British guy; men in L.A. all dress the same, so England or Boston professors would raise the odds, and only Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is as defined by one person's hotness.
Jude Law is objectively hotter than Hugh Grant but gives the same tweedy appeal as Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral, which one host calls the hottest Hugh Grant ever at a too-impressionable age, while another never believed Grant as a heartthrob; the panel agrees Jude Law definitely aged the best.
The L.A. house has aged very well: the exterior is a Wallace Neff house in San Marino by Pasadena, seen when Cameron Diaz talks to Ed Burns from the balcony, classic Spanish architecture and a dream L.A. home.
