Not the next great British movie

Rating: 5/10 (31 May 1999)

Notting Hill is much-touted by insecure Brits as the new "British Movie", yet - correct me if I'm wrong here - is made with American money. My theory is that Americans pay for shallow junk like this to make their own films look better. Notting Hill is a self-conscious comedy, with all jokes clearly sign posted, and all periphial characters "wacky" and "zany". There's Grant's crazy sister, overbearing mother and his effeminate employee. Aren't all us crazy English exactly like that? Well, no, not compared to the Welsh character, whose every line and pace is so predictable so as to bore off the screen.
Writer Richard Curtis even gets in a bitchy dig at the film industry when Grant reads through Robert's (American) film part. Commenting on the writer, he double takes and changes it to "writers". Fine if your film is Citizen Kane, but when you've just written Notting Hill, it seems a little ill-advised to criticize others. Grant and Roberts do quite well in the midst of all this sub-realism, but at the end of the day Robert's character isn't that nice to begin with.