hot girls don't typo

Notting Hill Movie Review: A Decade of Excellence, Part One

The year was 1999. It was a spring evening and I found myself watching a little film called The Matrix, easily the best movie of the year. As I walked out of the theater with my friend Chris it was hard to know what we were going to talk about first. The great plot? The amazing effects? The lobby shooting spree scene? Chris struck first before I had a chance to change into my Sunday’s best to properly heap on the praise, “Holy shit, how much weight did Keanu Reeves lose? He’s looking so thin!” Even after I heard this I still held steadfast in the belief that naked girls made Chris heavy in the skin thunder. I found out later that I was wrong, straight guys never say anything resembling what he did after viewing The Matrix (or anything for that matter), and that I had shit for working gaydar.

As luck would have it, that faulty gaydar is what would eventually lead me to not saying no to seeing a little charmer called Notting Hill later in the summer with a group of 75% weener owners - and I couldn’t have been more glad I did. Notting Hill instantly became the best movie of 1999, it was kind of hard not to be seeing as how it’s also the best movie ever made in history. William Thacker (Hugh Grant) is a local bookstore owner in England’s Notting Hill who has a chance encounter with Hollywood megastar Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) involving an orange juice spill. Pursuits are engaged, hearts are broken, laughter carries, and love prevails.

I’d like to delve a little deeper into why the characters, the true forces behind any great film, remain the gold standard. To do so, I thought it would be nice to compare the characters of Notting Hill to those of The Matrix.

Anna Scott vs. Trinity

Anna Scott isn’t perfect. There are times when she does her absolute best Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City impression in the bitch moves department. She of course still finds redemption and most of all, Hollywood or not, is still just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her. In the highs and lows, what’s important is that her name remains Anna. It’s a totally lovely “girl next door” name (who just happens to make 15 million dollars a film), not to mention she’s rocking the always crowd pleasing two first name full name (Steve Dave can tell you).

On the other hand, you have a character named the bewilderingly stupid Trinity. Imagine you’re at the bar making bedroom eyes with a brunette across the way. You work up the courage to go and talk to her. “Hi, I’m Cody.” She smiles, “Trinity.” At this point I imagine our first date. I go to pick her up and I’m waiting for her in the living room. She offers me a glass of organic orange juice to which I of course say yes. When she returns, she brings me a carafe of OJ so outrageously organic that it is, in fact, an actual orange. I shift my eyes and slowly place the orange on her kiln in confusion as I turn around and get the fuck out of dodge. She then probably Twitters about it.

Anna Scott. Point. Set. Match.

Come to think of it I’m not done. You know how to date a girl you have to get the approval of all her friends and shit? Trinity is so thick that even when The Oracle straight up tells her she was going to fall in love with the sunglasses-donning, bullet-stopping metaphor of Jesus - she still doesn’t quite know how much she’s into him. To be fair, I don’t think Trinity has a lot of gal pals. I could best gather that maybe she saw The Oracle a handful of times in her life at most (and she was 65… and a piece of software). And who knows how close she was with Switch, the southern accent rocking gym teacher lesbian who loved to dress in white.

To be continued