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From Amazon.co.uk
They don't really make many romantic comedies like Notting Hill anymore--blissfully romantic, sincerely sweet, and not grounded in any reality whatsoever. Pure fairy tale, and with a huge debt to Roman Holiday, Notting Hill ponders what would happen if a beautiful, world-famous person were to suddenly drop into your life unannounced and promptly fall in love with you. That's the crux of the situation for William Thacker (Hugh Grant), who owns a travel bookshop in London's fashionable Notting Hill district. Hopelessly ordinary (well, as ordinary as you can be when you're Hugh Grant), William is going about his life when renowned movie star Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) walks into his bookstore and into his heart. After another contrived meeting involving spilled orange juice, William and Anna share a spontaneous kiss (big suspension of disbelief required here), and soon both are smitten. The question is, of course, can William and Anna reconcile his decidedly commonplace bookseller existence and her lifestyle as a jet-setting, paparazzi-stalked celebrity? (Take a wild guess at the answer.) Smartly scripted by Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral) and directed by Roger Michell (Persuasion), Notting Hill is hardly realistic, but as wish fulfilment and a romantic comedy, it's irresistible. True, Roberts doesn't really have to stretch very far to play a big-time actress who makes $15 million per movie, but she's more winning and relaxed than she's been in years, and Grant is sweetly understated as a man blindsided by love. Together, in moments of quiet, they're a charming couple, and you can feel her craving for real love and his awe and amazement at the wonderful person for whom he has fallen. The only blight on the film is its overbearing pop soundtrack, though Elvis Costello's heart-wrenching version of "She" gets poignant exposure. With Rhys Ifans as Grant's scene-stealing, slovenly housemate and Alec Baldwin in a sly, perfectly cast cameo. --Mark Englehart
Amazon.com Essential Video
They don't really make many romantic comedies like Notting Hill anymore--blissfully romantic, sincerely sweet, and not grounded in any reality whatsoever. Pure fairy tale, and with a huge debt to Roman Holiday, Notting Hill ponders what would happen if a beautiful, world-famous person were to suddenly drop into your life unannounced and promptly fall in love with you. That's the crux of the situation for William Thacker (Hugh Grant), who owns a travel bookshop in London's fashionable Notting Hill district. Hopelessly ordinary (well, as ordinary as you can be when you're Hugh Grant), William is going about his life when renowned movie star Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) walks into his bookstore and into his heart. After another contrived meet-cute involving spilled orange juice, William and Anna share a spontaneous kiss (big suspension of disbelief required here), and soon both are smitten. The question is, of course, can William and Anna reconcile his decidedly commonplace bookseller existence and her lifestyle as a jet-setting, paparazzi-stalked celebrity? (Take a wild guess at the answer.) Smartly scripted by Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral) and directed by Roger Michell (Persuasion), Notting Hill is hardly realistic, but as wish fulfillment and a romantic comedy, it's irresistible. True, Roberts doesn't really have to stretch very far to play a big-time actress who makes $15 million per movie, but she's more winning and relaxed than she's been in years, and Grant is sweetly understated as a man blindsided by love. Together, in moments of quiet, they're a charming couple, and you can feel her craving for real love and his awe and amazement at the wonderful person for whom he has fallen. The only blight on the film is its overbearing pop soundtrack, though Elvis Costello's heart-wrenching version of "She" gets poignant exposure. With Rhys Ifans as Grant's scene-stealing, slovenly housemate and Alec Baldwin in a sly, perfectly cast cameo. --Mark Englehart
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Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gentle Wit, Warmth, & Charm, Terrific Ensemble Cast,
By DavidRoss (Woodland, CA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Notting Hill (Widescreen) (DVD)
My wife paid top dollar for this DVD when it was released, and I greeted it with contempt and dismay. I hadn't seen it, of course--but I had seen trailers promoting the corny contemporary inverted-gender Cinderella story in a tawdry attempt to cash in on the box-office appeal of stars Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts. Grudgingly agreeing to suffer through it for the sake of marital harmony, I soon discovered I'd been guilty again of contempt prior to investigation. Since then it has become one of my favorite movies. Perhaps even more surprisingly, it's become one of our teenaged boys' favorites as well, judging from the number of times they've seen it.NOTTING HILL is a superb example of a movie with high Replay Value. Despite seeing it a dozen or so times over the past few years--most recently last night at the request of a dinner guest--it never fails to entertain. Credit, of course, goes largely to the writer, Richard Curtis, a modern master of the Romantic Comedy genre (FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL, BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY, LOVE ACTUALLY), for infusing the script with gentle wit and charm. But the ensemble cast deserves equal praise for fleshing out Curtis's characters with so much warmth and decency that they become precisely the sort of people we enjoy spending time with. Tim McInnery, Gina McKee, Emma Chambers, Hugh Bonneville, James Dreyfus, and especially Rhys Ifans make this movie special, in much the same way that the terrific ensemble cast made FOUR WEDDINGS so enjoyable before. If you appreciate the warmth, wit, and maturity of movies such as IQ, NOBODY'S FOOL, and SENSE & SENSIBILITY, and require something more interesting than fiery explosions and flesh-eating zombies to feel entertained, then NOTTING HILL might be for you. Four stars for the overall quality of the film, plus one star more for its surprising high replay value.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Acting,
By Dan Blankenship "Author of THE RUNNING GIRL" (Lowell, IN USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Notting Hill (Widescreen) (DVD)
I judge movies by how real the actors make the events on screen seem real. Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant did a great job with this movie. I actually felt like I was watching THE REAL THING! The filming, the cast, and the storyline are perfect; just the right touch of humor, the right touch of drama...great job by everyone around them, too!I'd have given it six stars, but that wasn't an option. Buy this movie! It's great. G.B.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Brilliant Romantic Comedy,
This review is from: Notting Hill (Widescreen) (DVD)
After watching a recent but not great romantic comedy, I watched NOTTING HILL to clean my palate. It tasted so good. So refreshing. It is one of the best romantic comedies of the last 10 years. It is, in fact, brilliant.The lead actors are Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. Roberts plays a movie star, Anna Scott, trapped by the gilded cage of her own stardom. She is plays it uptight and bitchy. She's not very happy and that makes her bitchy. So if you don't like her, well heck, she did it well, didn't she? She also plays it a bit reserved, shy, which is probably how most performers are underneath their stardoms. Then there is Hugh Grant. He plays William Thacker, charming "average bloke" who owns a travel bookshop. Now nobody can play charming like Hugh Grant. He can play a charming rogue, charming cad, and a charming average bloke as he does here. Grant could probably charm the pants off a turnip, which is, something if you think about it. (I am sure there's a charming serial killer psychopath in Grant's future, so I look forward to the day of Hannibal, Jr.). The supporting cast members play a motley bunch of quirky characters, Will's friends and family. They are all wonder, especially the actor who plays Will's flatmate. But most important of all, they are all integrated in the plot. They're not just standing about doing nothing. The writing by Richard Curtis is brilliant and funny. Very funny. I mean really funny. Not forced funny. The actors delivered it perfectly. The directing was great. There is a scene where Will is dejected because Anna has rejected him. He walks through the scenery of Notting Hill as the seasons change. He's in the same clothing. We see a woman who is pregnant woman at the beginning of this and the same woman with a child at the end. It was a clever and perfect way to show time passing by as Will wallows in his depression. I liked most of the music except the one called She. It was a bit strident and maudlin and yet strangely like a soap commercial. That's probably my only complaint. The dvd includes a funny featurette by Grant and deleted scenes. The flatmate is even funny as all get out in those. So if you want to watch a clever, witty, charming modern day fairy tale where the princess (movie star) marries the tradesman (bookstore owner) than NOTTING HILL is the film to watch. Buy it and watch it over and over again.
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