Year Released: 1999
Directed by; Roger Michell
Screenwriter: Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral 1994)
Starring: Hugh Grant, Julia Roberts
(PG-13, 124 min.)
Genre: Romantic Comedy

“I live in Notting Hill. You live in Beverly Hills. Everyone in the world knows who you are. My mother has trouble remembering my name. “ William Thacker (Hugh Grant)

Romantic comedies, or films in general, don’t get much better than this! Thoroughly delightful, this 25-year-old British film gets better with each viewing. Part of that is the charm of Hugh Grant at his zenith here, the loveliness of a radiant Julia Roberts, and a script that is witty and insightful.

Another part of that is the shallow competition that has replaced romantic comedies with vulgar and crass American gross out films like American Pie (premiering the same year, 1999), The Hangover (2009), and Bridesmaids (2011), to name a few. No wonder the English think all Americans are crass fools, and no wonder again that Notting Hill became the highest-grossing (not gross out) British film of all time.

Maybe a little like what Anthony Burgess once said about curry, “Like a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. It stunned, it made one fear great art.”

In fact, Notting Hill reminds Different Drummer of some other wonderful quotes about food:

“Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.” –Harriet Van Horne

“I raised to my lips a spoonful of the cake. A shudder ran through my body.” –Marcel Proust

A dessert, the light poetry of the kitchen.” –George Ellwange

“Crepes: One taste would reform a cannibal into a civilized gentleman.” –Edward Prince of Wales

Which is, of course, ironic since many of the running gags in the film are about food atrocities, food faddists, and some of the truly horrible things that people eat.

The section with Hugh Grant’s William and the fruitarian is among the best:

William Thacker: What exactly is a fruitarian?
Keziah: We believe that fruits and vegetables have feelings, so we think cooking is cruel. We only eat things that have already fallen off a tree or bush, that are, in fact, dead already.
William Thacker: Oh, all right. Interesting stuff. So, these carrots...
Keziah: …have been murdered, yes.

But more of that in our Film-Loving Foodie section below.

Another thing that makes this film a classic and one that towers over Love Actually (2003) – where England four years later seems to be aping American vulgarity – is the innocence. Yes, William’s roommate Spike (Rhys Ifans) is completely outrageous but harmless, even if he is talking while strutting around in his underwear or flaunting said image to the paparazzi. Spike is the exceptional freak, more or less, and we actually find him a romantic at heart and the only one who actually has sense when William must make the most important decision of his life.

Scene about going out with her.

Notting Hill edges out another Hugh Grant film, Two Weeks Notice (2002), as well. Although that is a fun romp, Sandra Bullock’s awkward unknown nerd here playing against Grant’s stylish, womanizing playboy, lacks the chemistry of his awkward and thoroughly dreamy romance with Julia Roberts.

Additionally, the ensemble acting in Notting Hill is superb as well, especially at the birthday dinner for William’s sister, where part of the fun is that no one except the birthday girl herself (Emma Chambers as the star struck Honey) even realizes that Anna Scott is famous. They are all about as unworldly, naïve, and outwardly unsuccessful as William himself.

An astonishingly young Hugh Bonneville of Downtown Abbey fame playing William’s friend Bernie is hardly recognizable, and his conversation with Anna is hilarious in an understated English sort of way. When Anna tells him she is an actress, he assumes she is of the struggling variety.

Not the biggest star in the universe:

Bernie: So tell me Anna -- what do you do?
Anna: I'm an actress.
Bernie: Splendid. I'm actually in the stock market, so not really similar fields, though I have done some amateur stuff -- P.G. Wodehouse, you know -- farce, all that. 'Ooh -- careful there, vicar.' Always imagined it's a pretty tough job, though, acting. I mean the wages are a scandal, aren't they?
Anna: Well, they can be.
Bernie: I see friends from university -- clever chaps -- been in the business longer than you -- they're scraping by on seven, eight thousand a year. It's no life. What sort of acting do you do?
Anna: Films mainly.
Bernie: Oh splendid. Well done. How's the pay in movies? I mean, last film you did, what did you get paid?
Anna: Fifteen million dollars.
Bernie: Right. Right. So that's... fairly good. On the high side... have you tried the nuts?

***

Unlike the nihilistic films today, Notting Hill teases us with a sorbet of cynicism like a palate cleanser to give the next course a fresh perspective.

How about Julia Roberts as Anna shedding the truth about fame?

I’ve been on a diet every day since I was nineteen, which basically means I’ve been hungry for a decade. I’ve had a series of not-nice boyfriends, one of whom hit me. Ah, and every time I get my heart broken, the newspapers splash it about as though it’s entertainment.

Or maybe her anecdote about Rita Hayworth and Williams’s naïve reaction to it, which amplifies its meaning:

Anna Scott: Rita Hayworth used to say, "They go to bed with Gilda; they wake up with me".
William Thacker: Who's Gilda?
Anna Scott: Her most famous part. Men went to bed with the dream; they didn't like it when they would wake up with the reality.

And finally the most famous line in the film:

“I'm also just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.”

***

Hugh Grant’s William tells it like it is, too:

Anna Scott: Probably best not tell anyone about this.
William Thacker: Right, no one. I mean, I'll tell myself sometimes, but don't worry. I won't believe it.

Or his unadorned, “It’s as if I’ve taken love heroin, and now I can’t ever have it again.”

Not to be missed. Certainly to be enjoyed all over again. The intervening years and the ensuing film flotsam make this classic even better.

–Kathy Borich
🥁🥁🥁🥁1/2

Trailer

Film-Loving Foodie

Notting Hill has some of the best dialogue of any film, and some hilarious commentary on food. The Fruitarian scene comes to mind. But my favorite is William’s first awkward meeting with Anna, when the struggling Travel Book Sales shop owner spills orange juice all over her blouse.

In true Hugh Grant style, his attempt at small talk and is charmingly feeble:

“Would you like something to eat? Something to nibble? Apricots, soaked in honey? Quite why, no one knows, because it stops them tasting like apricots and makes them taste like honey... and if you wanted honey, you could just... buy honey…instead of apricots. But nevertheless they're yours if you want them.”

Anna: “I thought the apricot and honey thing was the real low point.”

But it’s better to watch the whole sequence, especially the parts with his roommate, Spike (Rhys Ifans), who just about steals the scenes from Hugh Grant, which is a monumental accomplishment in itself.

His entrance and the talk about a certain piece of anatomy shrinking to the size of raisons, not to mention the yogurt /Mayonnaise mix-up, are the stuff of legends.

I will let Liz Locke of Cinemasips.com take it away from here:

My favorite way to spend an afternoon is watching Hugh Grant stutter his way through a love scene. Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Sense and Sensibility are the trifecta of Grant awkwardness, and in Notting Hill, this results in the famous Apricot & Honey scene. Personally, I don’t need apricots soaked in honey, but I wouldn’t say no to some apricots soaked in brandy! While watching Notting Hill, I recommend drinking this Low Point cocktail.

You certainly don’t need a fizzy cocktail to enjoy this film, but it doesn’t hurt. And if you spill some orange juice on your t-shirt, take a cue from Anna and put your couture on instead. Notting Hill—I’ve missed you. I promise I won’t stay away so long next time. Cheers!

Hugh Grant Apricot Cocktail

Ingredients

1 1/2 oz Apricot Brandy

3/4 oz Orange Juice

4 dashes Orange Bitters

Apricot Sparkling Water

Champagne

Dried apricot for garnish

Directions

Combine Apricot brandy, orange juice, and bitters in a shaker with ice. Shake until chilled, then top with sparkling water. Stir gently to combine, then strain into a coupe glass. Top with champagne, and garnish with a dried apricot.

Cinema Sip.com