Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant make this celebrity romance funny and persuasive, with Roger Michell giving the supporting cast room to matter. The middle dawdles and the music overexplains, but we recommend it for the company.
Roger Michell’s Notting Hill takes the fantasy of an ordinary man attracting a famous film star seriously enough to make it work. It is a funny, affectionate romantic comedy, and we recommend it despite a middle stretch that could use a firmer edit. Richard Curtis writes the difference in status into the conversation, so that even a simple exchange can become an exercise in embarrassment. Michell keeps the actors from behaving as though the premise itself should be enough to charm us. At its best, the film lets attraction develop while everyone is trying to get through an awkward conversation.
Hugh Grant’s William Thacker is a London bookseller, and Grant makes him sound faintly apologetic for occupying any space at all. His hesitations are useful comic tools: a sentence seems finished, then another qualification arrives and makes matters worse. Curtis gives him enough sharp phrasing to keep the performance from dissolving into mannerism, although a little less verbal shuffling would sometimes help. We can believe that Anna would enjoy talking to William, which is more important than believing the initial coincidence. There is an intelligence underneath the fussing.
Julia Roberts has the more difficult task as Anna Scott, because she must make the celebrity plausible before she can show us the person who is tired of it. Her reserve is effective: William’s uncertainty is audible, while Anna often makes us wait to understand what she wants. Roberts never asks us to forget how conspicuous Anna would be in this company. The quieter exchanges between the leads give her space to suggest how wearing that attention can be.
The dinner with William’s friends gives the supporting cast something more useful to do than comment on the courtship. We laughed at the awkwardness of having Anna there, then found ourselves wanting the friends to put her at ease. Roberts makes the attention seem tiring even when it is kind, while Gina McKee, Tim McInnerny, Emma Chambers and Hugh Bonneville make the gathering feel worth attending. Rhys Ifans, as Spike, supplies broader comedy elsewhere, a welcome change from Grant’s carefully managed embarrassment. Michell occasionally indulges the eccentricity, but he knows these actors are part of the attraction.
Michael Coulter’s polished cinematography makes the romance inviting, although the ordinary life on offer can look suspiciously comfortable. Stuart Craig’s production design contributes to that comfort: William’s surroundings feel arranged to welcome Anna, with little that might put her off. A romantic comedy need not supply a housing survey. Still, this is a selective idea of London, and the film is less convincing when it asks us to take its ordinariness seriously.
Nick Moore’s editing is sharper with a comic exchange than with the longer business of keeping the couple apart. The middle loses pace, and some obstacles feel supplied because the film has decided the romance cannot proceed just yet. At 124 minutes, there is more postponement than the story needs. Trevor Jones’s score helps sustain the gentler passages, but the soundtrack as a whole keeps spelling out feelings the actors have already made clear. The music could afford to trust Roberts more.
Within the romantic comedy’s familiar rules, Michell’s useful achievement is to make the friends matter almost as much as the couple. Their warmth gives the fantasy something solid enough to survive its contrivances, and Curtis is often funny enough to earn another delay. See it for Roberts and Grant, provided a little romantic dithering does not try your patience.
