The most amazingly intimate cinematic experience.

Rating: Null/10 (12 July 2004)

Notting Hill is, first and foremost, not a love story, but a story about the innate innocence of humanity. It shows a group of friends, who, with all their quirks and improbabilities, are accepted by each other and us as family. It gains its greatest insight by contrasting Hugh Grant's world with that of Julia Roberts, and states that unabashedly. It draws your heart to Hugh Grant's world, and demonstrates that in his innocence and naivete he somehow believes (until he thinks proven otherwise) that she should be in it. The denouement is so convincing and his pain so great that we believe that he can't possibly recover. Since he is the most empathetic character, he attracts our sympathy, and yet he has already convinced us that Julia is worthy of his world (regardless of her apparent heartlessness) -- so we continue to think that this relationship might actually happen. When he drops the ball at the end of the touching scene about her just being a girl, asking a boy to love her, we completely empathize with his pain when he comes to the realization that he may have let the greatest good fortune of his life slip right through his fingers.
Unique to the movies nowadays, each of the main participating characters is given significant development, and we are able to, at least in part, relate to each of them, even Rys Ifens crazy portrayal. Oddly enough, he probably personifies the innocence with which life can be lived.
Roger Mitchell is a genius who obviously took as much time as necessary to carefully craft this perfect, wonderfully believable fantasy.
I own more than 400 DVD's, and yet I still manage to watch this one at least 3 times a year. I am sure that I have seen it at least 15 times, and it never gets old for me.