Notting Hill's trailer is awful--a laughless, schmaltzy montage. The movie was desperately marketed to the anti-Phantom Menace crowd, those same lovelorn females who ignored The Love Letter, but this time it worked. Perhaps the presence of Julia Roberts--whose allure beyond those perfect teeth still escapes me--had a lot to do with Notting Hill's opening weekend success, but the film's staying power is based on word of mouth. Allow me to spread some more good buzz right here.

Hugh Grant stars as William Thacker, a travel-bookstore owner who works and resides in a tiny English district called Notting Hill. Into his shop one day wanders famous actress Anna Scott (Roberts); a combination of petty robbery, spilled orange juice, and some stilted conversation results in their first, highly impetuous (dare I say improbable?) kiss. Days later, William sneaks into her hotel suite under the guise of a magazine journalist, and so begins a passionate, albeit surreptitious, affair. (Aside: Notting Hill's portrayal of press junkets is deadly accurate.) Only Anna's celebrity--or William's lack thereof--threatens to drive a wedge between them.

Screenwriter Richard Curtis has tapped into fantasy we all have considered, and for at least its first half-hour the picture's "Beauty and the Beast"-like scenario is (romantic) escapism of the highest order. As with Groundhog Day or Pleasantville, while watching the high-concept comedy Notting Hill one constantly places him/herself in the situation of the lead; it's William's ordinaryness that makes him irresistably exotic to the spoiled and bored Anna. Curtis (author of Four Weddings and a Funeral) is also smart enough to know that the unlikely couple's situation couldn't fuel two hours' worth of entertainment, so some of Notting Hill's finest moments revolve around William's eccentric friends and family.

By now, dear reader, you've probably heard a lot about Rhys Ifans' performance as William's imbecilic Welsh flatmate. Yes, he's a crowd pleaser, a walking sight gag, but his character is not nearly so involving as the wheelchair-bound (and appropriately named) Bella (Gina McKee, the anguished waitress of Naked) or Max (Tom McInnerny), her lousy chef of a husband. In the movie's best sequence, William, Anna, and company sit around bloated from Max's latest concoction and hold a contest: the last brownie on the table goes to the diner with the saddest life. The scene ends as only a British writer would have it.

If anything, fantastic bits like these dull the A plot's dramatic impact. Though Roberts and Grant are especially appealing, their relationship is convoluted too many times (Four Weddings' suffered similar flaws), and William and Anna ultimately have but one thing in common: they're lonely. (Worth noting in Roberts' and Grant's favour: the ubiquitous "I'm just a girl, standing across from a boy, asking him to love her" episode, featuring some of the best emoting either actor has ever done, is not nearly the syrup it appears to be in clips.) Notting Hill is nonetheless enjoyable; on the visual side of things, I especially appreciated director Roger Michell's playful changing-of-the-seasons number, in which a year passes as William walks from one end of an outdoor market to another. If only--and this is a surprisinly minor gripe--Michell had lopped off the egregious epilogue: for a story that thrives on what we bring to it, the filmmakers work too hard to tidy things up, leaving our imaginations in the lurch.-Bill Chambers