NOTTING HILL *** (out of four) -a review by Bill Chambers ( nottinghill@filmfreakcentral.net )
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starring Julia Roberts, Hugh Grant, Rhys Ifans, Gina McKee screenplay by Richard Curtis directed by Roger Michell
Notting Hill's trailer is awful: a laughless, schmaltzy montage. The movie was desperately marketed to the anti-Phantom Menace crowd, the same lovelorn females who ignored The Love Letter. And it apparently worked. Perhaps the presence of Julia Roberts-whose allure beyond those perfect teeth still escapes me-had a lot to do with Notting Hill's opening weekend success, but the film's staying power is based on word of mouth. Allow me to spread some more good buzz for Notting Hill.
Grant stars as William Thacker, a travel-bookstore owner who works and resides in a tiny English district called Notting Hill. Into his shop one day wanders famous actress Anna Scott (Roberts). A common thief, some spilled orange juice, and some stilted conversation leads to their first, highly impetuous (or is that improbable?), kiss. Days later, William sneaks into her hotel suite under the guise of a magazine journalist, and so begins a passionate, albeit surreptitious, affair. (Aside: Notting Hill's portrayal of press junkets is deadly accurate.) Only Anna's celebrity-or William's lack thereof-threatens to drive a wedge between them.
Richard Curtis has tapped into fantasy we all have considered, and for at least its first half-hour the picture's "Beauty and the Beast"-like scenario is (romantic) escapism of the highest order. As with Groundhog Day or Pleasantville, while watching the high-concept comedy Notting Hill one constantly imagines him/herself in the lead; it's William's ordinaryness that entices the spoiled and bored Anna. Curtis (who previously penned Four Weddings and a Funeral) is also smart enough to know that the unlikely couple's situation is not enough to fuel two hours' worth of entertainment, so some of Notting Hill's finest moments revolve around William's eccentric friends and family. By now, dear reader, you've probably heard a lot about Rhys Ifans' performance as William's imbecilic Welsh flatmate. Yes, he's a crowd pleaser, a walking sight gag, but his character is not nearly as involving as the wheelchair-bound (and appropriately named) Bella (McKee, the anguished waitress of Naked) or Max (Tom McInnerny), her lousy chef of a husband. In the movie's best sequence, William, Anna, and company sit around bloated from Max's latest concoction and hold a contest: the last brownie on the table goes to the diner with the saddest life. The scene ends only as a British writer would end it.
If anything, fantastic bits like these dull the main plot's dramatic impact. Roberts and Grant, especially, are appealing, but their relationship is convolutedly interrupted too many times (Four Weddings' suffered similar flaws), and William and Anna ultimately only have one thing in common: they're lonely. (Worth noting in Roberts' and Grant's favour: the ubiquitous "I'm just a girl, standing across from a boy, asking him to love her" episode is not nearly so syrupy as it appears in clips, and it features some of the best emoting either actor has ever done.) Notting Hill is nonetheless enjoyable; on the visual side of things, I especially appreciated Michell's playful changing-of-the-seasons number. If only (and this is a surprisinly minor gripe) he had lopped off the egregious epilogue; for a story that thrives on what we bring to it, the filmmakers work too hard to tidy things up, leaving our imaginations in the lurch.
-June, 1999
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