Here's another cheery look at NOTTING HILL (the Hugh Grant/Julia Roberts flick) coming out this May. Like I said yesterday, the word has been quite strong on this film from the get go, and it continues. This report has a few quibbles, but is still quite positve...
Withnail here in London.
Notting Hill - very positive, minor spoilers.
Screening last night of the new Julia Roberts, Hugh Grant movie Notting Hill. From the team who did Four Weddings & A Funeral, although this is NOT a sequel. Suit from Polygram Films announced film would premiere in London May 21st, will open in US May 28th.
You might say that the world needs another romantic comedy, like the cinema needs a director's cut of Pretty Woman. But Notting Hill is wonderfully fresh and engaging, and set to be another British success to follow in the footsteps of Bean, Four Weddings and the Full Monty.,
In the same way that Fierce Creatures was a companion piece, rather than a follow up piece to A Fish Called Wanda, Notting Hill reunites much of the team from Four Weddings. The difference is that Notting Hill is just as distinctive and funny as its predecessor. And it manages to be a genuinely classy, often hysterical British comedy.
The central theme of an unlikely relationship between two utterly different people may not be totally believable, but there are so many jokes and funny scenes that you can afford to ignore the total implausibility of it all. Grant is a divorced, unsuccessful book shop owner living in colourful Notting Hill - an area of West London. Roberts is Anna Scott, the most successful actress in the world - we know this as she's illustrated on a series of magazine covers ranging from Vogue to Newsweek. She's in London promoting her latest film - a sci fi epic called Helix, and in a spare hour off wanders in Grant's bookshop. A couple of awkward plot points later and they're enjoying a discrete romance, but is there any future in it?
Like Four Weddings, the film's hung around a series of excellent set pieces. A hilarious dinner party when Grant's friends and family first meet Roberts. Reactions range from a 'Holy Fuck' from his younger sister, to studied indifference from his best friend who doesn't even recognise her. And a rather injokey press junket when Grant visiting her at the Ritz Hotel gets mistaken for a journalist and spends the entire day questioning her and other cast members of her latest movie about a film he hasn't seen. But even in between these scenes the story rattles along at a fine pace, and when the narrative does slow down, it's usually just for long enough to crack a couple of cracking jokes, before shuffling off again. Most of the comedy relies on Grant's clique of friends. These may be a collection of grotesque English stereotypes - the wacky sister, the dim stock broker best friend - but when the dialogue by Richard Curtis is so well written, you don't really have the energy to be offended.
Where Notting Hill works best is in its observation of the difficulties of two so different people trying to have romance. Every situation is milked for all its worth and it hits far more often than it misses - giving us one of the funniest movies of the year. Roberts is better than she has been for years, managing to actually elicit a sympathetic performance as a chronically insecure, but famous figure. (Wonder where she got her inspiration from). Grant is less good, all nervous hair tossing and stuttered speech. But in the same way the Rupert Everett hogged the limelight in My Best Friends Wedding, the true star of Notting Hill is Rhys Ifans, Hugh Grant's shockingly revolting Welsh flatmate. From his first appearance in a T-Shirt with the words Get It Here accompanying a huge arrow pointing at his crotch, his brief scenes provide some of the funniest moments in Notting Hill.
Where it doesn't work is in its hamfisted attempt to comment on the nature of celebrity, lack of privacy and the way that famous people say they hate being in the public eye. Worse still is the central love song, performed by Boyzone's Ronan Keating. It's no Love Is All Around, and appears to have been shoe horned in with one eye firmly on the sales strategy for the soundtrack album -with no thought as to whether it actually works in the film or not.
Still these are minor quibbles in what should be one of the biggest films of the year. Opening in the US a week after some George Lucas sci fi flick - it should prove a refreshingly different and popular alternative. Expect it to be a huge hit.
