This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2014/mar/17/notting-hill-julia-roberts-richard-curtis-film-guilty-pleasure
The article has changed 3 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 0 | Version 1 |
|---|---|
| My guilty pleasure: Notting Hill | My guilty pleasure: Notting Hill |
| (1 day later) | |
| Films are there very largely to give you pleasure: they are pleasure-giving devices, and if a film succeeds in giving you pleasure, shouldn't you have the courage of your convictions and own up to it? So it is with mixed feelings that I nominate Notting Hill in this category, directed by Roger Michell and written by Richard Curtis — his 1999 followup to the 1994 smash-hit Four Weddings and a Funeral. It is widely panned but I enjoy it, and whenever it is showing on ITV4 as I flick channels I always find myself stopping to watch. It was in fact the first film I ever wrote about for the Guardian. | Films are there very largely to give you pleasure: they are pleasure-giving devices, and if a film succeeds in giving you pleasure, shouldn't you have the courage of your convictions and own up to it? So it is with mixed feelings that I nominate Notting Hill in this category, directed by Roger Michell and written by Richard Curtis — his 1999 followup to the 1994 smash-hit Four Weddings and a Funeral. It is widely panned but I enjoy it, and whenever it is showing on ITV4 as I flick channels I always find myself stopping to watch. It was in fact the first film I ever wrote about for the Guardian. |
| See if this film is playing near you | See if this film is playing near you |
| It is the story of a shy, floppy-haired bookshop owner (Hugh Grant), a lonely divorced guy who has a wacky Welsh mate called Spike (the role made Rhys Ifans a star) and who falls in love with a Hollywood A-lister, played by Julia Roberts. His heart gets broken. So does hers. Then they get unbroken. | It is the story of a shy, floppy-haired bookshop owner (Hugh Grant), a lonely divorced guy who has a wacky Welsh mate called Spike (the role made Rhys Ifans a star) and who falls in love with a Hollywood A-lister, played by Julia Roberts. His heart gets broken. So does hers. Then they get unbroken. |
| All right, it is undoubtedly a bit cheesy and slushy. Richard Curtis himself comes in for a lot of criticism generally, despite the enduring popularity of his Comic Relief charity. He is continually accused of making London look like a sanitised, poshified and sucrose-enhanced romcom-parody of the actual city, and the seed of that accusation was probably planted with this film. At the time, I, along with many others, pointed out that it concentrates on the well-off world of yuppie Notting Hill and somehow never mentions the carnival, despite a montage scene that specifically shows lovelorn Hugh Grant mooching about the streets all the year round. Moreover, Notting Hill always gets derided by Curtis fans themselves, who claim that Four Weddings is the better movie, a claim that boils down to the fact that it has a funeral in it, therefore it is partly about death, and therefore it is more serious and substantial. | All right, it is undoubtedly a bit cheesy and slushy. Richard Curtis himself comes in for a lot of criticism generally, despite the enduring popularity of his Comic Relief charity. He is continually accused of making London look like a sanitised, poshified and sucrose-enhanced romcom-parody of the actual city, and the seed of that accusation was probably planted with this film. At the time, I, along with many others, pointed out that it concentrates on the well-off world of yuppie Notting Hill and somehow never mentions the carnival, despite a montage scene that specifically shows lovelorn Hugh Grant mooching about the streets all the year round. Moreover, Notting Hill always gets derided by Curtis fans themselves, who claim that Four Weddings is the better movie, a claim that boils down to the fact that it has a funeral in it, therefore it is partly about death, and therefore it is more serious and substantial. |
| I don't agree. Notting Hill is, in its contrived way, a very romantic film, with an intense, heartfelt quality: I have often wondered how much it was based on a real experience of "morganatic" romance between celebrity and civilian. I am sorry and ashamed to say that on first viewing, I failed to spot Mr Curtis's witty allusion to Roman Holiday, right down to the press conference scene at the end. Having now had 15 years to watch terrible romcoms in the course of duty, I can see how very many screenwriters, both British and American, have tried to imitate the Richard Curtis touch — and failed. | I don't agree. Notting Hill is, in its contrived way, a very romantic film, with an intense, heartfelt quality: I have often wondered how much it was based on a real experience of "morganatic" romance between celebrity and civilian. I am sorry and ashamed to say that on first viewing, I failed to spot Mr Curtis's witty allusion to Roman Holiday, right down to the press conference scene at the end. Having now had 15 years to watch terrible romcoms in the course of duty, I can see how very many screenwriters, both British and American, have tried to imitate the Richard Curtis touch — and failed. |
| Reading on mobile? Watch the trailer for Notting Hill here | Reading on mobile? Watch the trailer for Notting Hill here |
| We get some very clever moments. Julia Roberts's movie star, Anna Scott, realises that the only way she can get an intimate meeting with Grant, and to conceal their affair from the papers, is to hide him in plain sight, to get him to come to a press "junket" at a London West End hotel and pretend to be one of the many journalists lining up for interviews with her. It is a good scene, and well-observed: the watchful PRs, the submissive interviewers, the photocopied press handouts, it is all pretty faithfully rendered, a very real part of the film-making world that I have never seen in any other film. | We get some very clever moments. Julia Roberts's movie star, Anna Scott, realises that the only way she can get an intimate meeting with Grant, and to conceal their affair from the papers, is to hide him in plain sight, to get him to come to a press "junket" at a London West End hotel and pretend to be one of the many journalists lining up for interviews with her. It is a good scene, and well-observed: the watchful PRs, the submissive interviewers, the photocopied press handouts, it is all pretty faithfully rendered, a very real part of the film-making world that I have never seen in any other film. |
| There are passionate speeches from Julia Roberts — it is, I think, her best film, so much better than the tiresome August: Osage County. Her ferocious denunciation of the hated British tabloids who finally discover the truth ("I will regret this for ever!") has a real anger quite absent from other romcoms. And her tearful, devastated expression when Grant tells her that he does not want to be with her is very well done. | There are passionate speeches from Julia Roberts — it is, I think, her best film, so much better than the tiresome August: Osage County. Her ferocious denunciation of the hated British tabloids who finally discover the truth ("I will regret this for ever!") has a real anger quite absent from other romcoms. And her tearful, devastated expression when Grant tells her that he does not want to be with her is very well done. |
| Notting Hill is not a guilty pleasure, but an entirely innocent one. | Notting Hill is not a guilty pleasure, but an entirely innocent one. |
| • Xan Brooks fesses up to loving Tangled |