PRETTY MAN
NOTTING HILL Directed by Roger Michell Screenplay by Richard Curtis With Julia Roberts, Hugh Grant Lensic PG-13 125 min.
Hugh Grant gets chastised from time to time in the press for the encroaching familiarity of his mannerisms, but as he's been making fewer movies lately (or we've been getting fewer of them), he seems to be wearing better again. The diffident dip of the bushy head of hair (here homage is paid with the nickname "Floppy"), the hesitations in speech -- they all add up to real charm here, as Grant teams up with Julia Roberts in a "Pretty Woman"- ish romantic fairy tale in which he gets the woman's role.
Roberts is the rich and powerful figure, here an American movie star promoting a blockbuster film in London, where Grant has a little travel bookshop in Notting Hill. She wanders into his store, a little later he spills orange juice on her and has her back to his nearby house to clean up, and she thanks him with a kiss that goes a chapter or two beyond the perfunctory peck on the cheek you might expect. A few days later she calls, they meet, he asks her out, and they go to his best friends' house for a dinner among common people.
There are several things that take this material and raise it to the level of delightful, satisfying entertainment. The script by Richard Curtis ("4 Weddings and a Funeral") has enough solid wit to carry it through heavy stretches of predictability, and Roger Michell, who directed the best of the Jane Austen movies ("Persuasion"), guides it all with a nimble hand. They've loaded it with in-jokes (like Roberts being mistaken by an adoring fan for Demi Moore) that are not so obscure that we can't be amused. They've given us the supporting cast of supportive friends that worked so well in "4 Weddings", including Grant's slovenly Welsh roommate Rys Ifans, and the lovely Gina McKee, his former girlfriend who is married to his best friend Tim McInnerny.
And they've given us Grant and Roberts, who provide good chemistry in their reversal roles. It is Roberts who is the moving force in the relationship, Roberts who moves in and plants the kiss, who makes the call, who dictates the pace of play. Grant is the adoring planet circling this radiant sun, and he pulls it off with a self- deprecating humor that makes him the focus of our interest and really carries the picture. We might, however, wish for a little more character delineation. We don't expect an awful lot of men in romantic situations, but we're used to women requiring something more profound than a pretty face with which to fall in love.
But why quibble? Summer's here, and this is a romantic comedy to lift us into it.
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