I have mixed feelings on this film. First, I love Hugh Grant.
Call me a pussy, but I think he's funny and holds the screen very
well. I don't like Julia Roberts, but here I found her decent
enough. She projected a great deal of vulnerability and anxiety
in the "I'm just a girl standing before a boy" scene.
The film started off smash bang. It presented what seems to be a
charming location without dwelling on it, and without making too
much of it. (No idiotic superlatives like, "Notting Hill is
the center of the world for me." Just a statement that
"This is my home.") I liked Grant's bookstore, I loved
the Ringo/Topol "anecdote," I enjoyed the confrontation
with the shoplifter.
In fact, I enjoyed the film until Julia Roberts became a
megabitch.
The "Bitch Scenes" make sense from a story point of
view, I suppose, because the filmmaker's needed to balance out
the relationship. Prior to the bitch scenes, of course, Hugh
Grant was just a lucky son of a bitch who would jump whenever
Roberts snapped her fingers. The bitch scenes *did* serve the
purposes of making the relationship difficult on both ends.
But.
But.
Did they really have to make her *that* much of a bitch?
The scenes were too effective, in my opinion. From that point on,
both I and my girlfriend were rooting for Grant to dump Roberts
and settle down with the cute English girl he has dinner with at
his friends' house.
But he continued being a doormat wussy.
Oh, well. I suppose that it's quite realistic he would
continue to pine for her, no matter how ugly her temper and how
selfish she was. But that realism sort of detracts from the
loveliness of the romance-- let's face it, the only reason you'd
still be interested in Roberts is *because* she's a famous, rich,
attractive movie star. Not exactly a Princess Bride romance there.
While the film *almost* rescues Roberts from bitch-hood at the
end, I was still quite sour on her, and still quite sour on
doormat/pussy/starfucker Grant for lacking the backbone to tell
her to go spit. Combine that with a too-cute ending and the film
just doesn't work for me.
Julia Roberts said "I want the fairy tale" in Pretty
Woman. Perhaps a bit more of that attitude was needed here. The
filmmakers had a difficult job of making a fairy tale seem
plausible, and to me at least, they didn't quite succeed. I'm
sure they succeeded for many, but not for me.
PS: The Elvis Costello song SUCKED on first hearing. Pompous,
treacly, the worst of EC. On repeated listenings, I decided it
wasn't that bad. But it still got the film off on a bad note.
Mote Rating:
Three stars out of Five. My problems with the film are admittedly
idiosyncratic. I thought it was a bit overcute in places.
Examples: Hugh Grant's narcissistic broken-heart sessions with
his oddball chums; the stupid music selections -- "How do
you mend a broken heart?" when he's broken hearted, "Give
Me Some Lovin'" when he's trying to get some lovin' at the
end. But I watched it (watched parts of it twice, actually), and
my criticisms are simply a dispute with the filmmakers' choices,
rather than their competence, which is undoubted.
