Has some very sweet qualities and laid-back performances

Rating: 6/10 (28 August 2005)

"Notting Hill" is quite pleasant and has many wonderful moments, but I resented the cookie-cutter formula which serves as the framework for the story. The two main characters played by Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts meet in his bookshop and trade some lines. The stage is set for them to meet again, which they do by bumping into each other on the street (he splashes juice on her clothes). This kind of stuff is worse than old-fashioned, it is downright creaky. Things do pick up from there as the bookseller and his movie-star girlfriend get closer to each other (the sequence where she meets his friends is enchanting, funny on different levels, and based in a surprising sort of reality wherein Roberts sends up her persona as an overpaid underachiever). But then the formula has to rear its ugly head in the climax: guy meets girl, guy loses girl...you can finish the rest. It's a 'nice' movie, lightly broad, but is it asking too much to want smarter people at the controls? **1/2 from ****