The scripts for these things reads somewhat like a game of Mad Libs after you've seen enough of them. I'm sure I was annoying everyone in earshot as I called out what would happen next. Goes a little something like this:
A rich, famous, or formerly rich and famous man is handsome charmer with unlimited patience and free time. He is surprisingly unmarried, and does not have a girlfriend or any tendency to sleep around. He meets a girl who is loaded with personality problems disguised as quirkiness (and also unmarried...natch), and either currently dating a cad or has been emotionally devastated by one. In a city (pick one) with 4-11 million people in it, they inexplicably run into each other at every restaurant and park bench until he becomes spellbound to distraction by her oddity and/or confidence at every perfectly scripted 3 minute verbal exchange. As they approach the moment of commitment, he slips ever so briefly into a random solitary moment of cad-ishness himself, setting the stage for the atonement. A moment of spectacular emotional fireworks where he prepares some kind of impossibly coordinated scenario for the sole purpose of begging for forgiveness and professing his eternal love (preferably in front of a crowd of 20,000 in a sports arena of some kind). A moment I've dubbed the "Hugh-gasm". Roll credits.
What is the epiphany, you ask? As I glanced at the couples around me, at the red-eyed women giving themselves cat-baths as their husbands were busily brushing popcorn off of their beer guts (including yours truly ;) ), I realized what I was watching. It's pornography for housewives. Hugh Grant is their Jenna Jameson, with his puppydog expressions (physics-defying eyebrows that somehow bend toward the ceiling at near 90 degree angles) and bumbly-stumbly British accent that perfectly delivers Hershey-Kiss dialogue into the camera and makes it feel like he's actually wooing you. Surely we could all marry the lonely and super-hot Prime Minister of Britain if we just hung around in the right coffee-shops. Just like we could all encounter a super-hot 20 year old female mechanic who loves to perform fellatio on complete strangers at the local Midas.
The payoff at the end was when I was asked on the ride home why in the world Hugh Grant would need to go soliciting prostitutes when he could have any woman he wants and was with Elizabeth Hurley at the time. Ah, but that's the lie Hollywood sells you! Real-life Hugh Grant doesn't want a misunderstood shopaholic to snuggle his days away with. He wants a $20 blow job in a taxi from a Vietnamese girl he'll never lay eyes on again. Smashing!
BTW, I liked the movie very much...it pairs well with a box of Mike & Ike's and an 84 oz. Diet Coke. Go treat your Valentine ;)
