Fairy-story, actually

Rating: 8/10 (26 November 2003)

Having had galloping indigestion all afternoon, teen problems and TTOTM I really wasn't in the mood for much. I had seen so many bits of the movie I didn't think there would be much left to see!!
As the well-known British advert says "It does exactly what it says on the tin". It's labelled Romantic Comedy and it is. It is also sentimental and a fairystory. In CurtisLand everybody is gorgeous (allowing for token fatties, quaint old folk and a disablement of some kind). London shines and twinkles (it doesn't) and every scene sparkles. This is the land where all problems are solved or summed up with a witty one-liner.
But hey, this is the movies so why not?
The story line was complex and I could have done with a couple less threads. You found yourself wanting to see more of one story and then another popped up just as you were getting all involved with another one.
The Keira Knightley didn't seem to amount to much and Kris Marshall just played the same brainless idiot that he plays in the British sitcom My Family.
The Laura Linney story just faded away too and although the porn stand-in couple were cute I thought they took up too much time.
I enjoyed the Colin Firth story especially the sub-titles and of course once you had accepted Hugh Grant as Prime Minister(!!) well, Hugh was just Hugh and although not a HG fan he does what he does so well and he gave me some of the biggest laughs.
Through all this the wonderful Bill Nighy popped up regularly like a naughty deed in a good world and stole the film.
Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson's story brought a bit of well deserved depth to all the fluff but sadly there was no time for their development and I was left wanting to see more of that story (and not just for the obvious reasons!!) Emma T is, I think, one of the finest actresses of her generation and brings a special quality to all her parts. Alan was great too, I especially like the scenes with Laura Linney and the Selfridge one with Rowan Atkinson which I hadn't been (or should I say Bean?) looking forward to!!
Well, if you can suspend your disbelief there is something for everybody to relate to in there. For me, it was the AR/ET storyline, thankfully not given a tidy ending as there are no tidy endings in real-life. The other scene strangely enough was the Laura Linney character dancing with Karl summing up that wonderful feeling you get when you finally get your hands on a crush!!LOL
Well, when all's said and done I left the cinema happier than when I went in and that's got to be worth the ticket money for any film!!