CineBad!!!

If you liked Four Weddings and a Funeral, then you’ll love this one! Basically it’s the same thing- Hugh Grant, everyone’s favorite lovable rapidly blinking Englishman falls for a bimboesque American chick. This time it’s movie star Anna Scott (Julia Roberts). She’s not quite as airheaded as Andi McDowell, but that’s OK, the movie’s pretty much the same anyway. There’s a cast of wacky co-stars, and Hugh Grant is as lovable in that gooey, passive English way as ever.

The film starts as things begin to change for unambitious William Thacker (Grant). When superstar Anna Scott walks into his travel book shop in the small London neighborhood of Notting Hill, he’ll never be the same again. Suddenly, after a few sarcastic run-ins with the star, they fall in love. Anna asks William to visit her, and he stumbles into a press meeting where he has to pose as a journalist for Horse and Hound magazine, and hilarity ensues. Then things start getting complicated as they break up, meet up again, etc. But it’s so sweet the way William pours out his heart to the untrusting Anna. This isn’t the same guy who gets caught getting hand-jobs from women of ill-repute in the backseats of cars. This guy is a sweetie. He still has a thing for his wheelchair-bound ex-girlfriend who married his best friend. This guy is purely ficticious. And he blinks a lot. Maybe he should see an opthamologist.

But couldn’t you not help gagging, er I mean crying, when Anna comes after him and says “I’m just a girl… standing in front of a boy… asking him to love her”. If you like happy endings, this one ends completely hunky-dorily, in a sentimental little way. Pure cheese.