Notting Hill (1999)
Directed by Roger Michell
London bookstore owner William Thacker's quiet life turns upside down when a chance encounter with famous actress Anna Scott sparks an unlikely romance challenged by their vastly different worlds.
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What critics say influenced Notting Hill
No matter who they're pretending to be on screen, even if they're royalty and regular people (like Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in "Roman Holiday" or even Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford in "Star Wars"), it's the first law of cinema that stars recognize each other and find a way to be together, no matter what the circumstances.
His lonely owner of a travel bookstore in the London burbs of the title - which has been freakishly rid of its Jamaican, Pakistani and squalor with a flat-mate called Spike (Rhys Ifans), a man who makes a strong case against Odorama and could be the mirthful doppelganger of the thug-drifter David Thewlis played in "Naked."
Screenwriter Richard Curtis, who also wrote Four Weddings and a Funeral, already perpetrated in that film's Andie MacDowell character the most maddeningly inconsistent, psychologically nebulous, and dramatically undeserving leading lady of any hit film this decade.
Quite simply put, "Notting Hill" is "Four Weddings and a Funeral" with inferior character actors, no Simon Callow, and fewer jokes.
Curtis (author of Four Weddings and a Funeral) is also smart enough to know that the unlikely couple's situation couldn't fuel two hours' worth of entertainment, so some of Notting Hill's finest moments revolve around William's eccentric friends and family.
But such are the charms of the two stars, and the delights of the screenplay by the monumentally witty Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral), that you don�t mind a bit ditching your disbelief for the duration.
This has been especially the case with Grant, whose last project, the 1996 medical thriller Extreme Measures , found the actor acquitting himself surprisingly well in a serious role, but it offered little reminder of self-effacing British charms that broke him through in 1994's Four Weddings and a Funeral.
A bloke named Richard Curtis, who created Four Weddings and a Funeral and who helped create and write The Black Adder series1-5 (6?).
As with Groundhog Day or Pleasantville , while watching the high-concept comedy Notting Hill one constantly places him/herself in the situation of the lead; it's William's ordinaryness that makes him irresistably exotic to the spoiled and bored Anna.
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Yes, this new Julia Roberts-Hugh Grant collaboration is a few notches below Marc Norman and Tom Stoppards brilliant, Oscar-winning screenplay, but Richard Curtis breezy script echoes the eccentric camaraderie of his Academy Award-nominated Four Weddings and a Funeral five years ago, while adding some bumble-headed situations that reflect on the Bean character that Curtis created with Rowan Atkinson.
Written by Richard Curtis, who penned Bean and the aforementioned Four Weddings, this story is cute but a little light on meaning, like those two.
As with its predecessor, the key to this film's considerable charm is the script by Richard Curtis, his first solo credit (he collaborated on "Bean") since "Four Weddings."
Director Roger Michell (Persuasion) knows right where to turn for this movie�s magic: He trains his cameras on Ms. Roberts and keeps them there as much as humanly possible.
Taking a somewhat more realistic view of "celebrity-dom" than the recent "EdTV" or last year's "The Truman Show," director Roger Michell ("Persuasion") wisely chose two performers who not only click together, but are also no strangers to the paparazzi, tabloids, and having every minute detail of their lives -- usually the less favorable incidents whether true or not -- being exposed.
Director Roger Michell (Persuasion) pushes the piece along at a brisk pace that belies the films slightly over-stayed length and fabricated ending.
Director Roger Michell, so thorough in his work on Persuasion, let a serious mistake slip through.
Though his mannerisms are familiar, William is a much lonelier character than the hedonist from the dreadful Nine Months , a less libidinous one than his Four Weddings chap, and a more clever, gently observant, and self-protecting man than his slightly dim Edward Ferrars in Sense and Sensibility.
Screenwriter Richard Curtis has tapped into fantasy we all have considered, and for at least its first half-hour the picture's "Beauty and the Beast"-like scenario is (romantic) escapism of the highest order.
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Of course, that's to be expected, but some of the reasons/rationale for their reuniting occasionally feels a bit awkward or forced, with too much of screenwriter Richard Curtis' ("Four Weddings and A Funeral," "The Tall Guy") fingerprints on them.
Though his shop is obviously a labor of love, he does not live and breathe the book business as the Meg Ryan character did in You've Got Mail , nor is he quite so feisty, even in that impish Meg Ryan way.
The final installment of what I'd like to call the "unrelated bookstore romance trilogy," director Roger Michell's "Notting Hill" is, for my money, easily the best (the other two being "You've Got Mail" and "The Love Letter").