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| Notting Hill |
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  (6/10)
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Runtime: 112 |
| Public Rating: 8.00 (32 votes) |
Director: Roger Michell |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Comedy |
Year: 1999 |
| Writer(s): Richard Curtis |
| Distributor: 1 |
| Reviewed by: Greg C. |
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Wonderful little movie about a bookkeeper, a movie star and the press. William Thacker (Hugh Grant) is a bookkeeper who lives and works in Notting Hill, a small market section of London. He lives there with his atrocious roommate, Spike (Rhys Ifans), whose eating, sleeping, and social habits are so frightening it's funny.
Thacker is happy with life, except for his worry about his book store staying open, as he only sells travel books, which doesn’t exactly attract a large buying audience. He has lunch with his sister, attempts to figure out what’s going on in his roommate’s head by giving him advice that includes telling Spike that you don’t wear "I like Blood" T-shirts on a blind date.
Then one day, a girl walks into his bookstore. She’s not really interested in anything, except avoiding the press. This girl turns out to be Anna Scott (Julia Roberts), the most popular movie-actress in the world (a real big stretch, let me tell you). She meets Thacker and takes a liking to him, only for him to find out that she is dating a Baldwin Brother (isn’t everyone?). A year passes, and Thacker suddenly hears from Anna again. As with all Hollywood relationships, she is no longer seeing the Baldwin Brother, and now wants to get to know William Thacker.
Without giving too much away, William follows pursuit of Anna in the same lost puppy-dog way Grant is in EVERY movie he’s in. Roberts is in good form, and she fits the role well since she’s basically playing herself.
The real showstopper, though, is Grant’s roommate, Spike. He is a filthy pig, who wears a wetsuit with leotards and drinks weeks' old milk, but you can’t help but laugh out loud every time he opens his mouth. One particular
scene involves him stepping outside Grant’s flat in his underwear in front of flashing photographers.
While the performances are worthy of the ticket price, the movie still has some problems. First of all, it plays out like every romantic comedy, with the boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, girl-realizes-mistake, boy-is-bitter-towards-girl, boy-makes-up-with-girl, roll credits. While it puts its own spin on the plot (a movie actress and an English bookkeeper falling in love), you really get the "been there, seen that" feel.
Another thing is the underdeveloped family characters. They are all extremely funny, but get little time to do anything. They could have spent a few more scenes with Grant’s wheel-chair ridden sister-in-law, who had more intresting things to say about herself than almost any other character in the movie.
All in all, a good romantic movie with a few minor setbacks of cliches.
Rated PG-13 for Language.
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