The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain

Hugh Grant - Reginald Anson
Tara Fitzgerald - Betty
Colm Meaney - Morgan the Goat
Ian McNeice - George Garrad
Ian Hart - Johnny Shellshocked
Kenneth Griffith - Rev. Robert Jones

Hugh Grant's bumbling Englishman act is comically apt in this Welsh Local Hero, an eccentric comedy drama sifted through dim memories of earlier Ealing comedies, but maintaining it's own individual charm.

Set during the First World War, Reginald Anson (Hugh Grant), is an English cartographer with Her Majesty's Ordnance Survey Office, who has the duty of informing a proud Welsh community that their local peak, Ffynnon Garw, is, at 984ft in height, 16ft short of mountain status. Led by the local inn-keeper (Colm Meaney), and after much debate, the villagers devise a plan to stop them downgrading the status of their local landmark, so they decide to detain Anson and his assistant George Garrard (Ian McNeice), until they have added the required footage to their hill, bucket by bucket. With the aid of Betty of Cardiff (Tara Fitzgerald), the bemused Anson finds his thoughts romantically preoccupied elsewhere long enough to stay in town. Problems arise when the villagers have to work on Sunday, the Lord's day of rest, but after receiving the blessing of the local priest, continue to work building their hill into the requisite mountain.