A cinematic concerto grosso, with a fixed group of friends passing through four distinct high-spirited movements and one grave one. There's a lot we don't learn about these people; and crude and overdone comic writing mingles freely, but not spoilingly, with deft and funny stuff: "When you work in a money market, what good are the novels of Wordsworth?" And Hugh Grant, looser, less stuffy, more flexible than usual, handles the assorted predicaments (e.g., stuck at a table of his ex-girlfriends at a wedding reception) with inexhaustible resource and nuance. Andie MacDowell, Kristin Scott-Thomas, Simon Callow, Rowan Atkinson; written by Richard Curtis; directed by Mike Newell. (1994) — Duncan Shepherd
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