Snotting Hill/the American Actress

In preparation for my upcoming jaunt to London, I have been immersing myself in Brit-flavored videos. Just watched Notting Hill, and am a bit disgusted, I must say. Another otherwise charming London comedy lethally muddled, as was Four Weddings & a Funeral, by the American Actress. Both of these films were written quite ably by Richard Curtis. However, the casting agents proved less adept... first with the truly dismal Andie MacDowall, then with Julia Roberts. Good lord.

Though I much prefer the newer, nastier Hugh Grant of recent years, Notting Hill (like Four Weddings before it) features the fumbling, slightly-foppish Hugh Grant that people came to either love or hate during the 90s. Personally, I loved him. Yes, he was a bit blinky and questionably unmasculine (and prone to incredibly bad choices like Mickey Blue Eyes and Nine Months, which are too awful to even link to), but I fell hard in high school and never quite let him go. He has a pretty narrow range as an actor, but at least he (well, usually) knows what he's doing with it.

There are things that really work for him in Notting Hill... The loopy sister, who looks enough like him to make him seem accessible, as though he had quite accidentally come out the handsome one in a family of normal-to-odd. The clever friends who create an enviable and complementary social group—Blackadder's Tim McInnerney, darling Hugh Bonneville, lovely Gina McKee (I adore Gina McKee in everything I see her in and wish she did more... what an interesting and intelligent beauty she projects!)... Even now iconic Spike, in all his mayonnaise-eating Y-fronted glory (and the role that cemented Rhys Ifans's place in the Millennial BritCool Factor, which I blabbed on about to some length in my Amazon review of Formula 51—scroll down to Customer Reviews), contributes to the presentation of a nicely human Hugh by bringing him down a notch—the simple fact that he is able to live with Spike makes him a bit less-posh (and let's face it, when he's posh he's intolerable).

But what doesn't work for Hugh, or for the film overall, is Julia. Notting Hill was made in 1999, before she'd won her Oscar and was entirely free to abandon obligatory roles in romantic comedy projects and Grisham-y thrillers. Watching her awful performance now, you can tell the woman is exhausted and bored, yet on some level champing at the bit for better stuff. Since the Brockovichian freedom granted to her by her Oscar win, Roberts has taken on much more sober, choosy projects and is still the most highly paid actress in Hollywood ($20 million a picture, as reported today), even after taking time off to spawn twins. Notting Hill suffers as a casualty of an actress in transition. The woman is weighed down. You can feel it. Even at the end when she is happy and pregnant (vomit) and in happily-ever-after mode with ever-bookish Hugh, she is missing the spirit that made her a star. She smiles a lot in the film, but the smile is strained. She is going through the motions here, and it nearly ruins an otherwise charming film.

Like Four Weddings, the worst parts of Notting Hill are when the American Actress is onscreen. In both films, the VERY WORST lines are delivered by the American Actress (Andie: "Was it raining? I didn't notice?", Julia: "I'm just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her"). Remove the American Actress, and you have nicely functioning comedies with interesting characters (yes, yes, all presenting a relatively narrow view of British society but at this point it's become a genre). Sigh. I guess it's about money. Otherwise it makes no sense to me why the American Actress gets included at all. In my experience the British aren't especially keen on Americans anyway—why keep throwing them in as the unlikely objects of British male affection? Alas. It's not as though the Hugh comedies will tank if they have no American Actress—About A Boy was nicely done with legitimately non-American females in the roles. But no, Hugh always gets stuck with the American Actress. I really wish Kate Winslet would have been Bridget Jones. But no, Kate got herself pregs and was replaced by... sigh.

Anyway, Snotting Hill has really contributed nothing to my London adventure planning, other than provide me with a map of the stalls on Portobello Road, which I probably won't visit anyway. Shaun of the Dead didn't prove to be rewarding research either, but at least it was a damn good time. Maybe I'm ODing on these London movies. Don't get me started on Gwyneth's accent.