The first involves the personality of Grant's character.
By the end, as much as we're aware of the ancient story machinery groaning away below deck, we're smiling. The movie is bright, the dialogue has wit and intelligence, and Roberts and Grant are very easy to like. These friends and others, like a restaurant owner, represent a salt-of-the-earth alternative to Anna's show-biz satellites. William also has a Welsh roommate named Spike ( Rhys Ifans), who seems to regard his bodily functions as performance art. In "Notting Hill" William's circle includes his airhead sister Honey (Emma Chambers) his best friend Max ( Tim McInnerny) Max's beloved wife Bella ( Gina McKee), who is in a wheelchair, and his stockbroker pal Bernie ( Hugh Bonneville), who is like one of those friends we all accumulate-boring, but reassuring to have around. And then her "real life" kicks in, complete with a movie star boyfriend ( Alec Baldwin) who thinks William is from room service.įrom "Four Weddings," we remember the extended family and friends such as Simon Callow, so good as the gay friend who has the heart attack. There are other moments when they are basically just a boy and a girl, hand in hand, wandering at night through London. The first "date" between Anna and William is at his sister's birthday party, where a mixed bag of friends takes her more or less at face value and allows her to enjoy what is arguably the first normal evening she's had in years. To be beautiful and famous is, the movie argues, to risk losing ordinary human happiness.
The scene is based on a fact of life: Anyone who gets paid $15 million a picture is going to perform the necessary maintenance and upkeep. Is Roberts talking about herself? Doesn't matter. She points silently to her nose and her chin. One comes when Roberts looks into the camera and predicts Anna's future: "One day my looks will go, and I'll be a sad middle-aged woman who looks like someone who was famous for a while." Another comes when she kids with the bookseller that the price of her beauty was two painful operations. There are moments of truth in the middle of this comedy that bring the audience to that kind of hushed silence you get when truths are told. The absurdities of a press junket are actually pretty clearly seen, allowing for some comic exaggeration, and the movie is more realistic about the world of a movie star than I expected it to be.Īnna Scott, the Julia Roberts character, is seen not simply as a desirable woman, but as a complicated one, whose life doesn't make it easy for her to be happy. Eventually they meet again during her press junket at the Ritz Hotel, where he is mistaken for a journalist, identifies himself as the film critic for Horse & Hound magazine and quizzes her about her horses-and hounds, I think. Will Anna and William never find the happiness they deserve? We slap our foreheads in frustration for them. That leads to an invitation to clean up at his nearby flat, which leads to some flirtatious dialogue and a kiss, but then they separate again.
The next time they meet, it's by accident, and he spills orange juice all over her. If there's one thing this movie has, luckily, it's an endless supply of Meet Cutes. She acknowledges his unspoken adoration and is grateful that it remains unspoken, and although there's enough electricity between them to make their hair stand on end, she leaves.
He tries to keep his cool, although he's as agog as if she were, well, Julia Roberts. The film of course begins with a Meet Cute she wanders into his bookstore, enjoys the way he handles a would-be shoplifter and their eyes, as they say, meet.
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