Notting Hill (movie)
C
I have several problems with this “classic” from one of my favorite genre’s. The first, and perhaps most serious, is Hugh Grant. Hugh Grant is a moderately good looking guy that desparetely needs bottom braces and a speech therapist. He isn’t charistmatic or particularly fit, and he loves hookers. How am I, a rational viewer, supposed to believe that Julia Roberts, at the height of ber beauty, would fall in love with this boy?
Well I didn’t. Julia Roberts fits the role perfectly, playing basically herself and doing a good job of it. She smiles alot and delivers her lines adequately or better. The support cast of characters do a great job of squeezing all the laughs they can out of a really dark script. This is the definition of British humor. All the characters are so down on themselves that they actually have one scene where they compete for a brownie by telling stories of what makes each of them the most miserable.
Alec Baldwin has a funny 2 minute scene where he plays, well, Alec Baldwin.
The music is terrible, which almost, almost, ruins the entire movie. This one song, “she” ( I think it’s called that, it’s pretty much the only lyric), plays no less than 3 times. It’s horrible. It sounds alot like the Miss America Pageant theme, except with only the word “she” and William Shatner singing it.
Notting Hill is long, and it feels it. It looks great and the script feels surprisingly witty, but Hugh Grant just doesn’t hold up his 1/2 of the bargain. I couldn’t help but think that with Colin Firth in the lead, this may have been a classic rom-com comparable with WHMS and Sleepless. This is one to watch drunk at 3 am when you can’t sleep and there’s no possibility of sex so you’ve already jerked off and now you don’t know what else to do.
