Member review

His your average bumbling shumuck of the streets, with an assortment of positively barmy bunch of friends and a house mate who considers fine dining as eating your fish and chips with a knife and folk. While she is an internationally renowned Hollywood starlet who can; wake up in Budapest, have brunch with the Italian president, spend the afternoon in a private Saint Laurent boutique in Paris and then end the evening being photographed on the red carpet in LA. Where else but in fairytales and films can you get such opposites attracting from seemingly different worlds; helped by that butterfly in stomach releasing, giddy feeling conjuring and sleepless nights inducing thing called love. To deny Notting hill the description of funny, charming and sweet would be a travesty of the highest regards, verging on the almost criminal. But at the same time it’s for this very same sweet and charming nature, which makes Notting Hill such a sugar coated and everything nice torturous experiences. What’s wrong with sweet? You may ask. Do I not look puppies and kittens? Well the answer to the second questions is; yes I do like puppies and kittens, they are both very adorable and cuddly. But as for the first questions; there is a lot wrong with too much sweet, just ask any 8 year old on the day after Halloween. Simply put, too much sweet leads to nausea, cringe and regret. You don’t even have to wait that long before you get your first douse of the sweet stuff, because right from the bat you are plunged into a vat of rainbows, skittles and toffees. Once a upon a time there was 30 something, with a unremarkable and anti-climatic life as the owner of a traveller book shop in the heart of Notting Hill, London called William (Hugh Grant). Then one day; lighting struck twice, all 8 planets aliened and pigs took flight, when by chance the world’s most famous actress Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) walked into his store. It was love at first; for him because she is beautiful, talented and successful and for her because he told off a shoplifter. But unfortunately what proceeds in the rest of the film isn’t as eventful as the start. Forget the blood filled struggle in Romeo and Juliet or the years of pain endured in the Notebook, because William and Anna’s love affair is less turbulent and whirled wind and more gentle breeze in the park. And that’s the problem with Notting Hill, it was just to nicey nice and sweet, absolutely nothing raw, gritty and eventful took place in the entire 119 mins running time except for one little scene. The scene occurred roughly half way through the film when William invites Anna to a dinner with his closest friends. At the dinner the group dive into a banter session to determine who has the most pathetic life - apparently failure is cause for celebration in this group. They all pull up a great fight, then suddenly miss rich and famous comes wadding in with a story about how being constantly in the public light isn’t necessarily about the glitz and glamour it is always made out to be; "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." Showing the audience how fame can lift you up until you’re touching the sky, only for a fraction later to drop you harder to the ground than you ever thought possible. It was this honesty and heartfelt balance to the sweet brought about in this scene, which I felt the film really lacked more of. Which extremely disappointing when you consider that Notting Hill reassembles three of the key players from "Four Weddings And A Funeral" (1994), actor Hugh Grant, screenwriter Richard Curtis and producer Duncan Kenworthy. When you think about it, Notting Hill is pretty much a retelling of Four Weddings, which tells the story of a bumbling fool who falls for a beautiful American, set against a backdrop of an assortment of weird yet lovable oddball friends. But it wasn’t just the fact that FW did it first, it was also because I felt FW was a lot more ground breaking, when you consider it dealt bravely with homosexuality, death and love in a new witty and profound way, whereas NH is merely a pale imitation with all the heart scoped out like the last bit of jam in the jar. However what NH does have going for it is that fabulous show stopper that is Julia Roberts. It wasn’t the fact that the role demanded such a herculean performance that I mention her, it is only because she is always a perennial joy to see come onto screen with that full lipped, toothy smile bright enough to light up a million cities at night, make her a universal star. Although I wouldn’t place NH anywhere near Pretty Woman or Erin Brockovich, nevertheless Roberts does make NH a shade of a better picture and a whole lot more palatable. Ultimately NH is merely a adequate date night film on Valentine’s Day, or a film to watch when you have already seen every other romantic film ever made at least 100 times and you have nothing left to watch.