Good for Notting

Rating: 1/10 (29 December 2014)

I'm sorry but I absolutely hated this sickly-sweet romantic comedy from the too-prolific pen of screenwriter Richard Curtis. It boasts, if that's the right word a wholly unbelievable plot about a mega-famous Hollywood actress (Anna Scott, played by Julia Roberts) escaping the trappings of stardom to naturally stumble into a London bookshop and promptly falling in love with its down-at-heel but of course down-to-earth and available mop-haired owner (played by who-else? Hugh Grant) and the ups and downs of their subsequent affair. Along for the ride are a motley crew of Grant's supposedly "normal" friends including Gina McKee and Hugh Bonneville and kooky characters like Grant's fated-to-be-mated hippy-chick sister, played by Emma Chambers and his painfully unfunny gauche flatmate played by Rhys Ifans.
By-passing the ridiculous plot, the film's dialogue is excruciatingly awkward and strives so hard to be everyday and natural but instead comes off as stilted and cringe-worthy. The humour is as thin as ribbon-pasta and the acting painful to watch, almost as if the cast was embarrassed speaking this forced, supposedly feel-good nonsense. The worst example is when Grant profanes the phrase "Shittety Wicketty" at an exasperating moment, but there's plenty more dross where that came from.
As for the playing, you can see everyone acting and a painful experience it is to witness. Mind you, you'd have to be Mary Berry to make writing as flat as this rise up. For good measure throw in a sappy soundtrack with Elvis Costello vacuously crooning the old Charles Aznavour hit "She" and a song by the even worse Ronan Keating, to make my movie-hell complete, while the only happy thing for me about the so-predictable happy-ending is that it was the actual ending of the film.
For a so-called romantic-comedy, I found it uninvolving, unamusing and ultimately unwatchable. I'd resort to sarcastic clichés to complete my hatchet job but fear the movie used them all up by itself.