| RATING: | 100% |
| FORMAT: | DVD |
Hugh GRANT's self-effacing charm is well to the fore here even to the extent of it controlling the usually-frenetic editing style of English-language movies by slowing it down to match his more languid pace. Here the characters develop and enrich before your eyes so that you get to know and to empathize with them. Julia ROBERTS manages to convince us that she is not a Hollywood film star even when she is playing one, which takes her special talent, looks and ability to emotionally-connect with the audience. Without these two very special performers, this film would fall desperately into romantic-comedy formalism. Rhys IFANS is also notable as a sleazebag flatmate-from-hell, who is as laughable as he is laugh-inducing. All of the performers, in fact, are impeccably cast in representing the loneliness and self-serving miserableness of the White middle-class life satirised here.
Unusually for a romantic comedy this is profoundly character-driven piece and written to such a very high standard that it is actually funny. The Roman Holiday, princess-kissing-the-frog quality to the story and themes is well conveyed without it being too obvious that this is, in fact, a classic European folk tale. The writer (Richard CURTIS) is to be congratulated for employing snappy one-liners that the actors can actually get behind and make even funnier than they appeared on paper. The jokes do not overwhelm the story and so enhance it magnificently. His disquisition on a paparazzi-fed culture lacks substance, however, and we remain imprisoned in our own outsider status regarding the film star (albeit expertly) playing a film star in this delightful wishful think-piece. The somewhat repetitive plot structure is designed to make the thing more realistic by repeating the inherent difficulties of maintaining the relationship described in the film, but makes it too long for its own good. And yet this is a true film in that it fully engages the emotions and holds ones attention throughout – a rare achievement in a Western film culture obsessed with a naturalism.
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