Movie Title: Notting Hill

Movie Title: Notting Hill
Rating: 9
Reviewed By: Michael Stevens

Review:

What a dream match-up. Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant in the same film! The woman who became famous for portraying a hooker on Hollywood Boulevard and the man who became infamous for getting a hooker on Hollywood Boulevard together at last in Notting Hill.

This film, unlike Pretty Woman, Roberts (last in Stepmom) does not play a hooker, but instead is something she is a little more used to, a famous actress. This actress, Anna Scott, is the world’s most famous actress and she is in London on a publicity tour to promote her latest film. Mr. William Thacker (Grant, famous from Four Weddings and a Funeral) owns a failing small travel bookstore in London’s Notting Hill neighborhood. He also lives with the disgusting, but very funny Spike (Rhys Ifans). Well, one day Ms. Scott wanders into William’s store, and the affable but nervous William attempts to strike up a conversation while trying to be cool. There seems to be something there, but not enough to make Anna stay, so off she goes into the street. William isn’t quite sure what to do, so he goes off to get some orange juice. On his way back he literally runs into Anna, spilling his orange juice all over her. Quite embarrassed, William offers to take Anna to his flat just across the street so that she can clean up. Once at the apartment the two continue their awkward getting to know each other session before she leaves to go back to her hotel, but not before she asks him to come by the next day. Come the next day, William goes to her hotel where he is mistaken for a member of the press and sent on the press junket to interview all the actors and actresses in Anna’s new movie Helix. This is actually one of the funnier parts of the film where William pretends to be a writer for Horse & Hound magazine and makes a friend with the oddly similar looking Time Out writer (Julian Rhind-Tutt). Well eventually the two meet up and begin a romance that one thinks is destined to fail, but they go through the motions and William introduces her to his gang that consists of his sister Honey (Emma Chambers) and friends Bernie (Hugh Bonneville), Bella (Gina McKee), and Max (Tim McInnerny). This little event seems to go fine, but Anna never seems completely committed to dating this nobody, so you still think things will not work out. This seems even more probable when Anna’s boyfriend Jeff (Alec Baldwin, Mercury Rising) shows up un-expectantly at Anna’s hotel. So now William is saddened and even perplexed by this turn of events and begins to move on in his life without Anna, but she just keeps showing up. But will it ever really work out?

Some others in this film are Roger Frost, Henry Goodman, Lorelei King, Melissa Wilson, Emma Bernard, Emily Mortimer, Richard McCabe, James Dreyfus, and Clarke Peters. Notting Hill was written by Richard Curtis and directed by Roger Michell.

I really liked the interaction between Grant and Roberts, two actors that seem made to do romantic comedies. I know Grant has branched out with more dramatic roles such as in Extreme Measures, which I thought he did well in, but I always picture him as the romantic comedy type guy. There are lots of laughs in this film, and my only complaint would be that the two fall for each other a little too easily. So I give Notting Hill nine couches out of ten.

Bye bye.