Director: Mike Newell
Charles: Hugh Grant
Tom: James Fleet
Gareth: Simon Callow
Matthew: John Hannah
Fiona: Kristin Scott Thomas
David: David Bower
Carrie: Andie MacDowell

All right, David and I give up. What is it that makes you all so enamored of this movie? As far as I can see there are only a few aspects of this flick worth the $3.25 rental: the performance of that Mr. Bean guy as a priest; the part where Andie MacDowell is forced to count the number of men she's slept with; and anything with Kristin Scott Thomas in it. Even if she was just crawling around on the ground looking for a lost contact lens, it would still be more entertaining than most of the rest of this movie.

David accuses me of having an anti-Hugh bias. This is absolutely almost true. I don't so much have an anti-Hugh bias as a bias against everyone who thinks that he's acting. Um, folks, that's just a British guy up there, being British. No big stretch there. See also Claire Danes' astonishing portrayal of a fifteen year-old in the drama My So-Called Life, in which she acted when she was only fifteen.

I had a Celebrity Spotting in New York once of Hugh Grant. He must have been doing something movie-ish, scouting locations or something, because he was standing with a lot of people, some of them with binders, who were pointing vaguely up and down the street. So in case everyone thinks that I'm a hopeless curmudgeon, let me get this out in the open. Hugh Grant is meant for the movies because he has glorious hair. It is truly a gift from above. Ordinary mortal men would sell their souls for even a quarter of what he has. But that doesn't mean the man can act. You want to admire him for his hair, that I can understand. But playing the reserved, slightly nervous Brit? Oh please.

And just for the record, David thinks that Andie MacDowell can't act. I personally liked her in sex, lies and videotape, although we all know that fellow CMU alum Laura San Giacomo stole that show. If you want to make David suffer (and I may save this idea for the umpteenth time he throws his dirty clothes next to the bed instead of into the hamper), hold an Andie MacDowell film festival. Even those hair color commercials make him cringe.

Bottom line here: Boy meets girl, boy chases girl throughout movie, boy gets girl in the end although who really cares.