Notting Hill

Julia Roberts - Anna Scott
Hugh Grant - William Thacker
Alec Baldwin - Anna's Boyfriend
Tim McInnerny - Max
Hugh Bonneville - Bernie
Emma Chambers - Honey
James Dreyfus - Martin
Rhys Ifans - Spike
Gina McKee - Bella
Richard McCabe - Tony
Mischa Barton - American Starlet

Early notices for this romantic comedy focused on the fact that despite being set in the vibrantly cosmopolitan and painfully trendy London borough of Notting Hill, the film features very few non-white faces and does not contain a single image of the annual carnival, the biggest party of its kind in Europe. Quite frankly, the lack of a street party might be an oversight, but it's the least of this film's myriad of problems. It's a bit like criticising The Elephant Man's appearance because he hasn't had a decent manicure. Sold coyly as 'a sort of but not really" sequel to Four Weddings And A Funeral, whatever charm that film possessed has gone west, and a lot further west than W11. Notting Hill is the hangover to the Four Weddings party, relying on caricature, cliche and the diminishing marketability of the increasingly irritating Hugh Grant.

Grant this time round is William Thacker, a diffident and slightly ineffectual (surprise, surprise) owner of a travel book shop which he runs with the assistance of The Thin Blue Line's James Dreyfus. A chance encounter with the world famous film star Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) first in his shop and later in the street where - joyously for the king of self-effacing self-abasement - he knocks a drink over her, leads to her planting a kiss on his lips, leaving Grant wondering how this miracle could have occurred and the audience speculating on how the film will string out their romance for the remaining two hours.

Like the impromptu kiss which ignites the leading couple's romance, Notting Hill is full of the unexplained and the frankly implausible. This being a romantic comedy, convention dictates that such unlikely occurrences are delightful coincidences of the type that were good enough for Shakespeare when he turned his hand to this sort of thing. Here, however, they look simply schematic and the last resort of a screenwriter - Richard Curtis - in a tight corner. Thus, Grant shares his house with soap dodging comedy Welshman, Spike (Rhys Ifans) - whatever the Welsh equivalent of Uncle Tom might be, Ifans is it, down to the last daffodil. In reality, Grant's character would sooner have the likes of Spike deported than live with them.

Equally, in the spirit of Four Weddings, there's a necessity to whip up a cosy supporting ensemble cast, constructed here from Grant's former girlfriend, sister and their dufferish spouses and hangers-on, who drop everything to listen to Hugh’s affairs of the heart and race around town in his support. The effect is like being put in a sleeper hold by the combined, tedious forces of middle England. Just as Notting Hill is like being wrapped up in a snug, smug blanket of middle class, middlebrow comedy, just call it the Dibley duvet. Most implausible of all, however, is the notion that Grant is a convincing leading man. His appeal has always seemed to dangle by the threads of his floppy fringe, but five years have elapsed since Four Weddings and here, done no favours by Michael Coulter's unsparing lens, he looks decidedly frayed around the edges and in truth, a little ropey. Of course, he does himself no good by shamelessly mining the one acting nuance he has made his own - diffident charm by way of hesitating verbal delivery - which only reveals his painful lack of range. Apologists for Grant's style have argued that David Niven could only do one thing, but the more apt comparison is he of the superior supercillum, Roger Moore.

Notting Hill will be applauded in some quarters simply because it is a British film. Whatever the truth of this claim (take a guess where the profits of this movie will be heading) a British film with such little regard for showing anything actually British that can't be instantly understood by America, seems a pointless exercise all round. This is a tourist's view of the capital, bland and reflecting that original complaint, colourless. Richard Curtis and Duncan Kenworthy went round London and all they brought us was a lousy movie.
Review© John Naughton.